In my last column (“Business development in the ‘post-truth era,’ ”) I discussed post-truth era characteristics and implications for business development. This article focuses on strategies to handle the post-truth era’s (PTE) symptoms that can make business development more challenging than ever.
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In my last column (“Business development in the 'post-truth era,' ”) I discussed post-truth era characteristics and implications for business development. This article focuses on strategies to handle the post-truth era's (PTE) symptoms that can make business development more challenging than ever.
Our focus is increasing the effectiveness of business development in the context of longer-term, enterprise-scale deals, which are highly susceptible to the symptoms of the PTE.
Let's consider some strategies to navigate the PTE: redefine, recalibrate, reorient and reinvent. I added “redefine” because the scale of background noise (aka fake facts) needs to be addressed first before any useful communication can occur.
Swimming upstream
In his book, “Weaponized Lies, How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era,” bestselling author Daniel Levitin points out that we have created more human-made information in the past five years than in all of human history. The problem is, along with facts, an increasing flood of information is engulfing them and it runs the gamut from misleading to totally wacky. Add always-on media and the effect of social networks to democratize the access and delivery of information and an illusion of credibility is created.
In the context of business, many organizations or departments are deluged with studies, reports and presentations that can obscure objective consideration, and unfortunately for the businesses themselves, decision making is anything but objective.
In “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” one of the most impactful books on bias, world renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman brilliantly describes a wide range of behavioral effects that are compounded in the PTE, and notably produce overconfidence in corporate decision making and planning.
As research continues to point out, effects like “confirmation bias” (selecting facts that confirm vs. conflict), “sunk cost effect” and the “endowment effect” (overvaluation of what we already have), “status quo bias” (an emotional preference for maintaining the status quo), and “loss aversion” (the tendency to attribute much more weight to potential losses than potential gains when assessing risk) all make it difficult to present new concepts in a corporate setting.
Worse, based on research from experts spanning Mckinsey to Chip and Dan Heath (check out their book “Decisive“), most business decision making is often flawed and tends to support the current position and past decisions, with little to no consideration given to the contrarian view.
One of the profound phenomena of the PTE in the business arena is the increased support available at our fingertips for justifying our choices. Instead of swimming upstream, one of the best strategies is to stop advancing your message, shift gears and focus on what things might look like through the eyes of your prospect.
Change perspective to redefine
Since the most important perspective is your prospect's, even if it is biased and shaped by the effects of the PTE, often gently guiding a change of perspective may open their mind to consider new ideas.
How they define their current state and how they view their future state can offer rich insight and open the door for a more productive dialogue. As experienced business development pros know, while it is great to find prospects actually looking for new solutions, by the time you do, they have often formed a concept of what they want, and based on Murphy's law, it will be one involving your competitor.
The best scenario is often one where you are able collaboratively to discuss what factors or events would cause them to consider a new approach. What if X happens? What then, and what are the implications if your envisioned future does not occur? Consider using the “pre-mortem”; imagining a program failing and asking how that might happen. This change of perspective can create an environment that may actually highlight PTE influences and biases.
By gently shifting the interchange from debating about whose facts carry the most weight, to discussing alternative perspectives of the future, the key first step toward redefining the dialogue is often achieved.
Chris Coyle is managing director of business development services for CBC GROUP.
