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Enjoying Your Work Richard Brislin |
Informal rules of thumb guide
workplace decision makingAfter accepting the presidency of a video production company, Alice Yahagi met with individual employees for a series of one-hour exchanges of information.
The purpose of this column is to increase understanding of human behavior as it has an impact on the workplace. Given the amount of time people spend at work, job satisfaction should be high and it should contribute to general life happiness. Enjoyment can increase as people learn more about workplace psychology, communication, and group influences.
She wanted to get to know her 40 employees as individuals and to learn their recommendations for company policy in the future.
After two weeks, she called her first meeting of all employees. One of her recommendations was, "Whenever you have a problem that requires my attention, please see me as soon as possible before difficulties get out of hand.
I agree with my mother who frequently talked about a stitch in time saving nine."
If Alice is using the adage that a few stitches today will prevent bigger problems tomorrow, then she is using a heuristic in her recommendations to her employees. Heuristics are informal rules of thumb that give guidance to decision making. Some heuristics are summarized in adages.
I have heard Chinese businessmen say that "You can't eat a char siu bao in one bite." The businessmen are pointing out that large projects have to be broken down in smaller components.
Other heuristics are used because they are easily available to people and can be drawn quickly from their memories. After terrorist attacks in the United States, people became much more concerned about airport security since that the dangers of travel were vivid in their minds.
People use heuristics to guide their decision making when they do not have time to do research on all alternatives.
Given people's busy schedules and multiple demands on their time, shortcuts to decision making are commonly used. If businesspeople from Hawaii have to stay overnight in Los Angeles on their way to Memphis, it is not a good use of time to do research on all possible hotels.
People are likely to use heuristics such as "near the airport" and "part of a chain of hotels I have stayed at before where the room was satisfactory."
The quest to find an "excellent" rather than a "satisfactory" hotel room is not worth the effort for most business travelers. Similarly, people do not have time to do research on all places to have a business lunch. They are likely to use rules of thumb such as, "My friend, who has good taste in food, recommended it and the restaurant has lots of parking."
Sometimes people are the unwitting victims of heuristics. When reviewing applications for employment, hiring officials sometimes examine whether applicants have given all the information that has been requested. Hiring officials have told me that they view incomplete applications as coming from incomplete people.
The officials do not have time to interview 40 applicants for one position. If they pare down the number to be interviewed based on completeness, they are using a heuristic in their decision making.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
The purpose of this column is to increase understanding of
human behavior as it has an impact on the workplace. Given the amount
of time people spend at work, job satisfaction should ideally be high and
it should contribute to general life happiness. Enjoyment can increase as
people learn more about workplace psychology, communication, and group influences.
Richard Brislin is a professor in the College of Business Administration,
University of Hawaii. He can be reached through the
College Relations Office: cro@cba.hawaii.edu
