Office of Operations
21st Century Operations Using 21st Century Technologies
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Role of Agency Culture in Mainstreaming TSMO

4. Cognitive Processes That May Impede Executing Change

This chapter discusses the common cognitive processes that can impede the acceptance and execution of change. This chapter also offers techniques that can overcome these challenges.

Decisionmaking is a complicated process with a myriad of potential influences to consider. These influences can affect the decisions of individuals, including those who are in leadership positions, and drive overall organizational strategies (including change). Oberholzer‑Gee and Kunreuther (2002) conducted a study on how public opinion polls influence the decisionmaking of elected officials and found that social pressure is critical for explaining local policy‑making and organizational strategy. In an evaluation of different managerial decisionmaking processes, Omarli (2017) determined that factors affecting the administrative decisionmaking processes were personal, environmental, and psychological. Robinson et al. (2018) noted that decisionmakers under stress can exhibit a variety of behaviors such as narrowed or distorted perception, decreased ability to handle complex or difficult tasks, and a focus on short‑term survival goals at the expense of long-term benefits. The focus on short-term goals at the expense of long-term benefits may be necessary as transportation agency decisionmakers are often faced with short-term urgencies that may interfere with their long-term goals (see Torma-Krajewski  and Powers, 2010 for an emergency response training example). The desire to change an organization is an example of the reverse—there is short-term pain, but long-term benefits.

There are four common biases that can affect decisionmaking in everyday tasks and are quite common in organizations:

  • Framing—A common decisionmaking bias involves people reacting differently to information depending on the phrasing, context, or “framing.” (Tversky and Kahneman 1981) This bias can have profound impacts on organizational change efforts and a transportation system (i.e., switching or transitioning operations during a major incident or emergency if the personnel do not adjust their thinking). It is also related to mental set, which is often a source of change resistance—people are used to thinking or doing things a particular way and are reluctant to change. A strategy to mitigate this bias is to change labeling/logos (which is why organizations will often spend time/resources on marketing refreshes), colors, or codes to indicate clearly that the context has changed (e.g., from normal operations to emergency operations or from one organizational structure to another). In addition, one should be aware of how information is presented and whether it may be framed in a negative or positive way, especially when making a business case to leadership to support TSMO efforts.
  • Confirmation bias—People often favor or seek out information that confirms a prior hypothesis or belief, leading to confirmation bias. (Wason 1968) This bias can affect leadership when there is the tendency to focus more on data that support an initial approach or only listen to opinions that support their plans. Thus, management may not seek out alternate explanations and inadvertently ignore other useful information. Instead, the decisionmaking process or a properly deployed framework (with appropriate metrics and reporting support) would be to sample the full range of both negative and positive possibilities rather than just the positive ones. In other words, present alternatives to a decisionmaker (e.g., the best-case clearance time as well as the worst-case clearance time if several separate incidents happen simultaneously).
  • Anchoring—Individuals have the tendency to rely on the first piece of information or limited pieces of information when planning or forming an estimate; this is known as anchoring. (Ariely 2008, Tversky and Kahneman 1973) This bias often manifests itself in operational situations where the first incoming field reports (e.g., of evacuation times on a roadway) drive estimates or the more salient images affect planning. Similarly, when undertaking organizational change, estimates of scope, costs, timing, and success probability may be driven by early misleading sources or data. To mitigate this bias, one should be careful about overweighting early or limited information and should generate alternative or counterfactual options. Another option is to constantly refine estimates as data become more reliable over time. (Robinson et al. 2018) A proper framework and reporting set of tools for management would iteratively adjust estimates as new data come in, and present options across the full range to combat the tendency to overweight one part of the spectrum based on early estimates.
  • Groupthink—A bias that is particularly salient in more hierarchical and structured organizations is the concept of groupthink (demonstrated by the famous Asch experiments (1951)). It is defined as a desire for harmony, often at the expense of optimal solutions. In other words, subordinates or peers may follow along with sub-optimal approaches so that the team or organization can “get along.” When leading a change effort or in a position of authority, one can combat this bias by: (1) encouraging objections consistently and publicly, (2) not indicating preference for a particular choice or approach until after the team has provided their opinions, (3) asking designated members to play “devil’s advocate,” and (4) regularly evaluating previous patterns to determine if there has been a standard approach that is regularly repeating (i.e., a ‘rut’). Transportation agencies are hierarchical and structured, so groupthink is a potential problem. If an agency wants to avoid some of the pitfalls of groupthink, then making it clear that alternative opinions and truth will be rewarded helps to increase the comfort level and improve information sharing, which is often restricted when groupthink is endemic.