Confirmation Bias Meeting

Fleeting

A kind of bullshit meetings when people try to reach a decision by simply stating trivialities that sound right without challenging them. Often, those suggestions are clumsy quoting of articles that rely on a different set of hypotheses.

Either people follow those easy decisions or they are claimed to be to “theoretical” and not enough “practical”.

They generally end up with a decision that we don’t know if it will do any right but that looks good enough.

Often, when trying to explain how some of the hypothesis do not hold, the arguments are simply rephrased without changing the meaning (rationalization).

Real life example.

• A : we can decide that during review meeting, we will consider the past promise we made with the stakeholders,
• B : our current practice does not include meeting with stakeholders and therefore not making promises to them. Do we assume that we add this to our current,
• A : no, don’t try to think it to theoretically. Let’s rather say that during those meeting, we review the engagement we had with the people that are invested in our work.
• (B : Wait…What? I don’t see the difference…)

Another one

• B : we might want to have measurement of this so that we can assess how useful it will be.
• A : you are too theoretical. Let’s focus on our experience.
• …
• A : now, it is a good practice to collect feedback so that we can improve.
• (B : wait… despite the fact that I agree with the need to collect feedback, isn’t that theoretical as well?)

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