Cognitive Design

I recently gave a talk to a group of HR/OD professionals at a Fortune 200 company on what cognitive design can do to enhance organizational effectiveness. One topic that really caught fire was how to redesign (from a cognitive perspective) the HR and management policies in large organizations. As organizations mature policies that are put into place (on how to make decisions and what behaviors are appropriate) can easily evolve into a web of rules, revisions and exceptions that borders on the complexity of the  U.S. tax code.  In such cases the policies create a massive cognitive load on the organization.  Non-compliance, decision errors and unintended consequences can be common place.  On the other hand, a well designed set of policies can make a fundamental contribution to the profitability and competitiveness of the firm.

Cognitive designers can help by emphasizing policies that:

1. Can be applied in a way that fit how managers and employees think (low cognitive load)

2. Safeguard against cognitive biases in managerial decision making

3. Naturally reflect the principles at work in the culture.

Expanding on the first point, policies that fit the way people think typically:

• * Provide examples that contain the answers to the most frequently encountered case – this lets me “blink” or reason by pattern matching.

• * Are resolved by “one good reason” – this lets me make single factor decision the simplest decision heuristic.

• * Invoke sequential reasoning or “rules of thumb” applied in a specific order – this lets me take a cookbook approach and avoid complex branching logic that overloads.

• * Use prioritized and binary branching logic – this lets me work through a complex decision space in otherwise  “fast and frugal” way by answering yes/no questions with the important ones asked first.

These guidelines, based on the last 20 years of research in naturalistic decision-making,  represent increasing degrees of cognitive load including, blinking (no thinking), single rule reaction (little thinking or no thinking), sequential reasoning (little thinking if rules are simple and have a natural order) to more complex decision making.   

The rules-of-the-road for making decisions at a traffic intersection is a good example of a single reason sequential decision making design. You know the story – if a policeman is directing traffic you follow their hand signs. Baring that and given a traffic light you obey that. Absence direction by a policeman, traffic light (or sign) the first person to the intersection has the right-of-way and so on.   All the rules are based on a single factor and are executed in sequence. It would be easy to overcomplicate the situation and design policies for age of the driver, size or type of vehicle, time of day and an endless series of other important sounding variables.  The result would be a lot more accidents and delays.

The rules-of-the-road example also illustrates how policies can reflect principles at work – in this case by respecting authority and being courteous. Linking policy to values (aka principles) in a natural way increases alignment and lowers cognitive load even further.

These cognitive design guidelines can be applied to the development of any type of policies or rules meant to shape behavior and decision-making. They don’t tell you what the policy should say but instead emphasize how it should be said (structured) to make sure they fit with the way our minds work. A body of policies or rules is an artifact that should be designed to support and enhance cognition.