There are many cognitive biases waiting to trip us up. Sunk Cost Fallacy, The Curse of Knowledge, Confirmation Bias, the list goes on[1]. A cognitive bias is a common flaw in our thinking that leads to an irrational judgement or decision.
I think I’ve found a new cognitive bias.
My experience tells me that people fail to read documents, even when they know they should and would benefit from doing so. Yet, despite this, I still hold an unfounded expectation that when I write a document, people will read it. I suspect others do too. Is this a cognitive bias?
Let’s look at the underlying issue:
The Social Media Industrial Complex
It’s not hard to understand why your carefully prepared document is ignored by the people who would benefit from reading it. We live in the age of the social media industrial complex[2].
The documents we produce compete against the finely tuned streams of dopamine-releasing social media ‘likes’ and ‘mentions’ etc. Reading and understanding a technical document will never give the same short-term reward hit, so your audience’s brains quickly drift onto other things…[3]
Figure 1 – Your document is competing with this…[4]
There is, however, a simple solution.
The Power of the Walk-Through
A project manager recently reintroduced me to the simple power of the walk-through. Book a meeting with people who need to understand the document and talk them through it.
People are more likely to turn up to a meeting (virtual is fine) and have someone talk them through the document than just read it themselves. Perhaps the invite to a meeting answers the basic human need for belonging[5], or maybe it just makes the activity time bound. Either way, walk-throughs help.
Send out the document a few days prior to give people a chance to review and add comments.
In the walk-through, don’t read the document out verbatim; tell stories and summarise. Make it interesting. Explain why things have been done in particular ways and incorporate feedback from the audience to help build a common understanding, and crucially, alignment, across a team.
Figure 2 – GenAI’s view of how tech people collaborate on a document[6]
Go through all the review comments and close them out or agree further actions. Take questions and feedback.
Wrapping it up
Avoid the trap of assuming people will read your document. Use the simple power of the walk-through to bring people together, incorporate their ideas and align the team around a document to help drive a successful outcome.
[1] Cognitive Biases https://yourbias.is/
[2] Cal Newport on the Social Media Industrial Complex: https://calnewport.com/are-you-using-social-media-or-being-used-by-it/
[3] Study on how the Internet may be changing our cognition: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502424/
[4] Image generated on Google Image FX with prompt “social media likes and mentions inside a person’s head, causing distraction and anxiety”
[5] See role of belonging in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
[6] Image generated on Google Image FX with prompt “Many hipster tech workers from different cultures in a room where a document is being shared and collaborated on”
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