Recently I was facilitating a small group of bankers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago- an iconic old building with magnificent architecture, soaring columns and lots of marble. But of course, the inside is modern; our meeting room had every electronic audio and visual convenience- the best of everything. During a break, I went to use the third floor restroom and upon entering the toilet stall, I see something. While I was facilitating the next segment of the meeting, my mind kept circling back to that metal flange on the sidewall. What was its purpose? On the next break, I practically ran back to the restroom, entered the stall and fully examined the metal bracket. It was on a very weak spring, allowing it to be pulled down to a 90 degree angle, but would slowly spring back …
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Battling Confirmation Bias and My Lying Eyes
I had previously written about my experience flying from Albuquerque to Houston and how I was able to overcome confirmation bias in getting through security and making my flight after a long security checkpoint shutdown. On the ensuing flight, I was reading an article by Ben Yagoda in The Atlantic about cognitive biases. I was most interested in this article, partly because I talk about these biases in my teaching at banking schools and in keynotes, but mostly due the excellent content that my good friend Lee Wetherington produces on this subject. The more I feel that I am able to combat confirmation bias, I am subject to the anchor bias in which I am more likely to believe that I am less susceptible to cognitive biases than I actually am. In Yagoda’s excellent article, the …
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The Power of Misinformation
My wife Samantha and I arrived at the Albuquerque (ABQ) airport several hours early today. The idea was to check in our bags and then go find a place to have a nice lunch together; we were traveling to different destinations and wouldn’t see each other for several weeks. Check in went smoothly, but as we walked towards the escalator the to TSA check-in, I immediately sensed something was up. The lobby was jammed full of people, and no one was going up the escalators—some people told us there had been an incident in the concourse, and no one was being allowed up through security. We weaved through the mass of people to find restrooms, which were in an area adjacent to the escalators. I noticed a sign next to a staircase that indicated you could reach the concourse through them. I figured …
What Paper Towels Tell Your Employees
I recently walked into the break room at U.S. Dataworks and noticed someone had bought replacement paper towels. Based on my status of not having anything to do on my off time, along with my Sam’s Club membership, I had assumed responsibility for provision of our kitchen items. However, I had been out of town for an extended period and having run out of paper towels, someone took it upon themselves to get some. Kudos for the initiative! I take my responsibility of keeping our kitchen appropriately stocked to keep our staff fully allotted with snacks, drinks, and most importantly, coffee. I believe in having great coffee—I order coffee for the office from The Beanery (www.thebeanery.com) and they make sure we have the finest coffee at reasonable prices, as quality coffee is something …
The Importance of Speaking Well
As the emcee of the Community Bankers Association of Georgia Annual Conference, I get to introduce speakers and listen to their presentations. One of the highlights of this year's conference was a talk by the newly minted ICBA CEO Rebecca Romero Rainey. Rebecca comes from a line of community bankers and was previously CEO of her hometown bank located in Taos, New Mexico. Rebecca did not have any slides for her presentation. As far as I could tell, she did not have any notes from which she referred during her talk either. What she did was offer a vision of how community banks can strengthen their communities by offering great products and solutions with superior service. What struck me the most was just how competent and confident she was as a speaker. I am a professional speaker. …