The Newspaper Parable

I was working with my team recently and we were having a hard time agreeing on how to solve a problem. We had two possible solutions.

One solution was black and white.
The other was read all over.

It seemed like we couldn’t do both and we were having a hard time agreeing.
One developer argued “If it’s red all over we could have false positives. This exact thing has bitten me in the past. We should avoid red and go with a black and white solution!” 
Another developer countered with “If it’s black and white it won’t be as reliable as if it’s read all over!”
The discussion went back and forth without a clear winner emerging.  Eventually we agreed that it wasn’t worth arguing over and chose one at random.

Looking back later I realized that we could have had a solution that was both black and white AND read all over.
A Newspaper!
I wondered why we didn’t think of it sooner.
We were all knowledgable people with good intentions, thinking hard about the problem.
Why were we arguing?

Reflecting back, I think there were 2 things getting in our way: ambiguity and anchoring.

Ambiguity

Communication is hard, and language is ambiguous.
‘Red’ and ‘Read’ are homophones.
They’re words with different spellings and different meanings that sound the same.
We all assumed we understood each other but we didn’t!
It’s important to ask questions and paraphrase.
I wish I had said “You mean red, like the color?”
At Pluralsight, one of our values is Seeking Context with Intention.
I’ve gotten good at asking questions when I feel confused or curious.
But this experience taught me that I should keep asking questions even when I think I understand.
Certainty is a mirage, and read is not a color.

Anchoring

The other thing tripping us up was the common cognitive bias known as anchoring.
According to wikipedia, “Anchoring is a cognitive bias where an individual depends too heavily on an initial piece of information offered. Once the value of this anchor is set, all future arguments are discussed in relation to the anchor.”
Because the first solution we came up with was black and white, we anchored on the idea of colors.
When someone suggested a read all over solution, we immediately thought about it in terms of our anchor.

Aside from anchoring on the color, we also anchored on the idea that there were just two options, and that they were mutually exclusive.
It seemed impossible for something to be both black and white and red all over.
Instead of trying to think of more options, we argued about which of the two was better when the best solution would have been a combination of the two: one that was both black and white AND read all over.

At Pluralsight, another of our values is Creating with Possibility.
We’re always trying to solve hard problems.
It can be really easy to anchor on an initial solution and be blinded to other possibilities.
In order to Create with Possibility, it’s important to become aware of biases like that and work to overcome them.

One thing I’ll do differently is look for third and fourth options, instead of settling on the first one I think of.

I’ll keep my eye out for newspaper solutions.