{"id":4866,"date":"2022-11-10T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T07:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/?p=4866"},"modified":"2022-12-26T14:34:26","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T12:34:26","slug":"dangerous-dichotomies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/10\/dangerous-dichotomies\/","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous Dichotomies"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>One of the exciting aspects of work is its capacity to help us learn from others. That very opportunity can also be a hazard however, if the collective thinking of an organisation acts to stifle. Here\u2019s an example&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A few years ago, I was involved as a judge in the Australian Customer Service Awards. On the evening of the Awards presentation, the keynote speaker was the then CEO of a State Education Department \u2013 a man who was committed to service.<\/p>\n<p>To this man\u2019s credit, he tried something very different in his presentation. He invited discussion amongst attendees. He did this by asking a question \u2013 one which stunned me.<\/p>\n<p>He said, \u2018Now I\u2019d like to get some feedback from you. Could you consider who are the customers of schools &#8211; are students the customers, or are parents the customers?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>This was not a \u2018trick\u2019 question. Of course, the answer to this is that both parents and students are customers \u2013 and there are many other customer groups as well!<\/p>\n<p>This CEO was a victim of \u2018dichotomous thinking\u2019 and it\u2019s highly prevalent and dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, dichotomous thinking disguises itself as \u2018absolute thinking\u2019, which is best explained by another experience I had with the senior people from a construction company.<\/p>\n<p>During my work with them, I presented the concept of a \u2018band of tolerance\u2019 with regard to price. Essentially this says that if you are within the price \u2018band of tolerance\u2019, price doesn\u2019t matter \u2013 quality, trust and reliability come to the fore.<\/p>\n<p>The managers of the company revolted. They felt it was fine for other companies to think this way, but their customers were solely driven by price. They tendered for most jobs and price was the determining factor.<\/p>\n<p>This represents thinking in \u2018absolute terms\u2019, which in a sense is dichotomous thinking \u2013 they were saying that:<\/p>\n<hr style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" \/>\n<blockquote style=\"color: #aec840;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Our customers are price driven&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">OR<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">they\u2019re not our customers\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<hr style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" \/>\n<p>This kind of thinking occurs in many organisations. How many times have you heard these kinds of comments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>\u2018Our customers aren\u2019t interested in quality\u2019<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Our staff are not here for the long haul\u2019<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Managers here are interested in rapid growth\u2019<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So what\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n<p>Dichotomies rarely exist in the real world. We have degrees of variation that normally prove absolute thinking to be simplistic and wrong. If you are thinking in dichotomies, then your thinking is probably wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the trap of dichotomous thinking is that we interpret events in a way that supports our stance.<\/p>\n<p>If we deal with a customer who argues about price, that event will act to confirm our view that customers are price-driven.<\/p>\n<p>When we deal with a customer who is not price sensitive, we tend to discount that customer as an aberration.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time to challenge dichotomous thinking!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the exciting aspects of work is its capacity to help us learn from others. That very opportunity can also be a hazard however, if the collective thinking of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,81,87,88,82,89,90,80],"class_list":["post-4866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-workplace-culture","tag-corporate-culture","tag-culture","tag-leadership","tag-leading","tag-organisational-culture","tag-ugrs","tag-unwritten-ground-rules","tag-workplace-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4866"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4875,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866\/revisions\/4875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}