Do you find yourself increasingly upset whenever you take in news regarding COVID-19, especially the recent third wave? Do you often ask yourself — whenever you get a glimpse of your friends’ relatively productive lives through social media posts — if you’re the only one who isn’t flourishing throughout this pandemic?

If you’ve been feeling extra stressed out or worried lately, it’s not uncommon. Many other people are also feeling this way.

As the virus spread through the country, destroying plans as well as routines, it left a path of unpredictability in its wake — enough to create some mental health and wellness problems that need to be resolved. …

Anchoring keeps you shackled to initial information and keeps you from moving forward. Make the best decisions to propel your company by breaking free from this mental blindspot. That’s the key take-away message of this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, which describes how to avoid anchoring your business to the wrong data.

Video: “Are You Anchoring Your Business to the Wrong Data?”

Podcast: “Are You Anchoring Your Business to the Wrong Data?”

Links Mentioned in Videocast and Podcast

• Here’s the article on Are You Anchoring Your Business to the Wrong Data?
• The book Resilience: Adapt and Plan for the New Abnormal of the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic is available here
• You are welcome to register for the free Wise Decision Maker Course

Transcript

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Wise Decision Maker Show, where we help you make the wisest and most profitable decisions. Today, I want to talk about anchoring, specifically, whether you’re talking anchoring your company to the wrong data. Now, what’s up with anchoring? What is this concept? And why is it bad? Well, anchoring has to do with how we perceive information, how we hear information, and how we get attached to the initial information we hear on any topic. So any topic whether we learn about a person, or an event, or development, business trend technology, the first piece of information that we hear about the topic tends to very much anchor us and color our future impressions of this topic, it’s very hard for us to switch our perspective from this initial anchor. So what happens is that the initial piece of information, especially if it comes from our source that we trust that we perceive as credible, valuable, that it’s trustworthy, we tend to see all of this information through this lens, all the information that we’re getting through the lens of initial information. That’s why it’s especially important to be careful about the first information you hear, and to be very willing to update your mind to change your mind based on new evidence. Because most of us don’t actually this is a tendency, cognitive bias, a dangerous judgment error called anchoring. So if you’ve been watching, checking out the wise decision maker show for a while, you know, we talk about cognitive biases quite often see, these are the dangerous judgment errors that cause us to make really bad decisions, to have bad perspectives on reality to not see reality as it is, and then come to wrong conclusions, whether in business, whether in life, all of these sorts of things. So you’ve got to be very careful about anchoring. Because often, when new evidence is actually quite a bit more persuasive, objectively, you know, when you’re looking from outside, you will tend not to update your beliefs to change your mind based on this new evidence, you’ll tend to stick to what you know, it’s comfortable. That’s what our gut intuition tells us to do, to stick to what we know to our pre-existing beliefs, conceptions, information, and then not change our minds based on new evidence. So you have to watch out for this anchoring. It’s a pretty bad tendency. As an example, let’s think about this pandemic. covid 19 coronavirus, pandemic, huge, huge example of anchoring. I’ve been so frustrated with so many people who have been anchored on the initial information they received. So that’s been really bad, really, really bad. I mean, you probably know that, let’s say the Centers for Disease Control, they changed their guidance based on new evidence. So they came up with some initial guidance that said, you know, prepare for two week disruption or something like that. And, you know, don’t need to wear masks, but COVID-19 spreads mainly through touching surfaces. Over time, they changed their guidance, they said that no, you actually need to prepare for a much longer disruption than two weeks, it’s going to be much more serious, that COVID-19 mainly spreads through airborne particles, and that you actually do need masks that are very protective, especially protective of you, it helps you protect yourself when you wear a mask. And it helps protect other people from if you have COVID-19 without knowing it, because so many of us are asymptomatic. When we have COVID-19 this information, this new information. This is how science works. You get new information, and you change your beliefs. And this is how business works. You really know how hard you should work to get new information. And you change your beliefs based on this new information. Unfortunately, many business leaders don’t approach business this way, even though they should stick to their initial decision. They say, okay, we made this decision, and therefore we’re going to stick to it. That’s what makes us good leaders. That’s a terrible, terrible perspective. And that is one of the worst aspects of anchoring this really negative impact on leadership, where leaders perceive themselves as having to stick to their initial judgment. So they have got some initial information, they stick to it, even though new information causes them to change and should cause them to change their minds. And this is how really high make the biggest profit in business and how to protect your health in this pandemic. So another aspect of anchoring with COVID-19 was that there were a number of recent pandemics, that h1 f1, flu, the swine flu, all of these pandemics that had an impact in Asia, or Africa or the Ebola virus, that didn’t really have much of an impact in the United States. I mean, some impact of course, but not a huge impact, not nearly as big as COVID-19 So folks, anchored under previous impressions. You don’t necessarily anchor on the immediate thing you hear about COVID-19, you can anchor on your previous impressions of pandemics as a whole. So that’s another tendency that we have anchored on previous information we got about the topic and not changed our mind about based on new evidence, which showed that COVID-19 is clearly going to be much worse than these other pandemics. Then, of course, many leaders unfortunately compared COVID-19. To the flu, Elon musk famously compared COVID-19 to the flu, many other business leaders, as well as other leaders, political leaders, civic leaders, comparing COVID-19 to the flow. Of course, that’s a bad comparison. As we know now, I mean, many people wish really, we knew then, and these leaders had perhaps some ulterior motives for comparing COVID-19 to the flu, based on them not wanting to disrupt their business processes, and so on, which really is not a good idea. Because in the end, of course, it’s much better to face reality, accept reality, rather than hope for and wish for an optimistic outcome, which is definitely not going to come COVID-19, of course, is much more deadly than the floor, about five to 10 times more deadly. And it seems about as contagious, maybe even more contagious, more problematically, we don’t have any defenses against COVID-19. Whereas, of course, against the flu, we have a number of treatments. And we also have vaccines, which are somewhat effective. So that’s a bad comparison, even though it’s much more contagious and much more deadly than the flu. So those are some bad tendencies when comparing an COVID-19. When anchoring to initial evidence, you heard on COVID-19, whether about masks, whether about its comparison to the flu, whether previous pandemics and this is something that unfortunately, a lot of companies run into. So for example, one of my consulting clients, was a company, a fin tech company, 130 people fin tech company in Texas, which initially, the CEO and CIO on the C suite had an impression of COVID-19 is no worse than the flow, not a big deal, you know, don’t really need to prepare for any serious disruptions. And so they didn’t treat it seriously. Well, unfortunately, not treating it seriously, not instituting the kind of precautions the CDC mandated as something that really businesses should be doing led to a major outbreak in the office. And including some C suite leaders who got sick, the CEO had to go to the hospital. And numbering a couple of employees not C suite level, but older employees died was really bad. And the company got into a lot of trouble with employee morale, people didn’t have good retention. They had bad customer service, of course, because of all these disruptions. So the CEO called me, once she saw me on the podcast talking about her business leaders needed a webinar talking about how business leaders need to pivot for the covid 19 pandemic and for the postcode future. And so we talked about the situation. And I pointed out how anchoring they really should have known by me, which is when this outbreak happened, and when they saw me on the webinar and called me that there was a lot of new information about COVID-19 being much more deadly than the flow. But you really need to take these guidelines from the CDC seriously. And especially in Texas was a problematic situation, because it didn’t close in nearly timely enough manner. And three opened way too fast. And so there was a huge surge in cases. And that was pretty bad around that timeline, with May, April, May, June. So that was pretty bad. And they really should have done much more to protect themselves. So we talked about anchoring, we talked about the kind of strategies that they needed to actually improve their performance. And they went off on a good path. After that. They really had changed their program. Previously, they mandated all employees to come back to the office when Texas reopened, which was way too fast. And that’s what they had an outbreak of. And so instead of that day, rolled out and working from home, everyone who wanted to work from home could come into the office, but they discouraged people from doing so. So only people who really needed to come to office had to choose to come to the office. And that was much more helpful, helping improve employee retention, employee morale and got the company going off on the right track. So that’s the kind of problem that business leaders experience. And professionals experience all sorts when they anchor to the wrong data, whether in the pandemic or any other business development, whether they do that their product will be great in the marketplace. Despite evidence showing that it’s not great in the marketplace. There is a reason about 70 to 80% of all product launches fail because they are people who are to anchor to the initial impressions, they think the product will be good. And they tend to only look at information showing that it’s good, ignoring information that the marketplace is not as receptive to the product as you wanted. So there’s so many other tendencies in business, we’re anchoring trips folks up, you got to watch out for these tendencies. And you have to protect yourself and your business from anchoring. Alright, so this was another episode of the wise decision maker show. And I hope you found this episode beneficial. Please follow us on whatever media you enjoy this episode, wherever both videos and podcasts version, so make sure to check that out. It’ll be in the notes. So if you check me out on the podcast, the video will be noted. If you’re checking out the video, the podcast will be noted in the notes so you can check those out and follow us and the other formats as well as on your favorite formats, whether iTunes, YouTube, wherever you’ll find us across the spectrum. Please click like if you liked the episode, and please comment, we’d really love your comments. And that helps us make the show much better. Same thing for reviews, please leave a review whatever you heard and saw this episode. Of course, as always, there’s a blog with much more information about this show in the notes. So make sure to check out the blog that talks much more about the case study gives a lot of citations with the scientific evidence behind what I’m talking about, and business evidence. So check that out as well. There are a couple of books that are really relevant to this topic. One is my book called never go with your gut how pioneering leaders make the best decisions and avoid business disasters. Of course, it’s about decision making risk management change management. So check that out and then resilience, adapt and plan for the new normal of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. That’s about how you adapt to COVID-19 and the COVID and the post COVID economic recovery. So check that out make sure you read it if you want to make it if you want to protect your business in the context of COVID-19 and the post COVID recovery and of course your career as well. You want to check out a free resource called the wise decision maker course. This is a free course with eight modules, eight video based modules on making the wisest decisions, check that out at disasteravoidanceexperts.com/subscribe. Alright, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. And as always, the wisest most profitable decisions to you, my…

What are you paying attention to during this pandemic? What you’re focusing on can make a big difference to your business, your career, and your health.

Many people are very excited by the prospect of effective vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which have applied for emergency authorization from the FDA. This wonderful news has deservedly lifted the stock market, and many companies are moving to eliminate planned budget and staff cuts.

Yet my conversations with a number of C-suite leaders show that too many are showing excessive enthusiasm over these vaccine news. …

Misinformation via Neuroscience (Video and Podcast)

Have you changed your views about COVID-19 months into this pandemic? Or are you anchoring to the same views you did in March?

For example, many people still believe the false claim spread by many prominent leaders in March that COVID is no worse than the common flu. They protest against public health measures such as wearing masks, despite high-quality peer-reviewed studies showing that masks save lines.

They also ignore new developments, such as the recent urgent requests by governors to stay at home and telecommute to tamp down the explosive third wave of COVID. Likewise, they fail to pay attention to just-published research showing that restaurants, gyms, hotels, houses of worship, smaller grocery stores, and other crowded indoor spaces with prolonged exposure — including workplaces that fit such criteria — significantly increase COVID risk. …

You can survive and thrive in the new abnormal of the pandemic by identifying and addressing fundamental needs of your household: safety, connection, and self-esteem. That’s the key take-away message of this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, which describes how your household can survive and thrive during this pandemic.

Video: “How Your Household Can Survive and Thrive During This Pandemic”

Podcast: “How Your Household Can Survive and Thrive During This Pandemic”

Links Mentioned in Videocast and Podcast

• Here’s the article on How Your Household Can Survive and Thrive During This Pandemic
• The book Resilience: Adapt and Plan for the New Abnormal of the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic is available here
• You are welcome to register for the free Wise Decision Maker Course

Transcript

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the wise decision maker guide, where we help you make the wisest and most profitable decisions. Today, I want to talk about how your household can survive and thrive during this pandemic. It’s a really difficult issue and many people are realizing right now that the pandemic is going to go on much longer than they thought at the beginning of the pandemic, people thought, well, we’ll go on maybe a couple of weeks month, it will be over by the summer, folks like Elon Musk, were saying he had a tweet in April 19 saying closed on March 19. Clay said that there is going to be close to zero new cases by the end of April. Yeah, right. Unfortunately, we are in the pandemic right now. In the depths of it at the end of August, we have over 180,000 people dead, and over 5 million cases. So it’s a pretty terrible situation. It’s really bad. And people are really realizing the depths of the situation. So many schools are closed. That’s one example. Many universities are closed, many workplaces are still closed or choti, multiple places, and others are laying people off, right and left because they just don’t need the services of these people. So we’re in a pretty terrible situation. And people are figuring out that it’s going to go on for a very long time, we won’t have a vaccine available until the spring of 2021 at the earliest. And then it will, then that’s a super optimistic scenario, one very unlikely to happen to have an effective vaccine over 80% effective By that time, even if we do which would be wonderful, I really hope that we’re crossing my fingers. But it will take how how long to actually produce enough but distributed vaccinate people, the most promising vaccine candidates, the Pfizer vaccine and the maternal vaccine are novel technology that needs to be stored at the Pfizer needs to be stored at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, the maternal vaccine needs to be stored at minus four degrees Fahrenheit. And neither of those are things that modern pharmacies, typical pharmacies can handle. These need to be specialized venues. So be pretty hard to actually produce it and distribute the vaccine. And then polls surveys are saying that something like 40% of the American population is not really willing to take it only 60% are really willing to take it. So then you have to have a massive public education campaign to actually get enough people to take the vaccine. So it’s going to be a pretty difficult issue, even once we have an effective vaccine, and that will very unlikely to happen by the spring of 2021, which is the earliest possible timeline. So it is likely the pandemic is likely to last for several more years, and we’re still going to be dealing with it in the most optimistic case it will take a year to distribute, produce, distribute and vaccinate people. So that’s going to go on into early 2022. But more realistically, 23 or 24. So you’ve got to figure out how your household can survive and thrive during this period. Using individuals in your household as a whole. That’s something you really need to learn about. And you need to think about the need to make a plan for your household to survive and thrive in this pandemic, not simply treat it as a day to day issue, not simply treat it as Hey, I’m going to deal with this next flare up next issue of COVID-19. Related next and not really think about the long term consequences because when you don’t think about the long term consequences, you burn out, people are treating COVID-19 as a sprint, but really it’s a matter of thumb. And they need to think about this for their household for themselves. How do they address this? How do they change the way they live? How do they change their mental habits, their physical habits, everything about how they go about their personal lives, their family lives, their connection to others. You need to figure out how to satisfy your needs in this new abnormal. And that is where we’re in my new book called resilience, adapt and plan for the new normal of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. I talked about how we can think of it as going back to a normal we’re falling into a cognitive bias. A dangerous judgment is called the normality bias. But we want to act as though things are normal. And so we don’t really think through how to address this new abnormality. So what we need to do is figure out how to satisfy your underlying needs because pandemic or no pandemic your underlying needs your households The line needs to remain the same. But you have to figure out how to satisfy them in a different way. There’s going to be much less interaction with people outside your household in order to figure that out. But you need to think about the consequences, the long term consequences of these lesser interactions, you know, not seeing your family favorite family members for Thanksgiving, you might have seen them for the summer for July 4, you can see them outside. But on Thanksgiving, of course, that’s going to be pretty cold unless you’re lucky in a very warm tropical area. But for most of the US and most of the world, Thanksgiving is not a place where you can have a time where you can easily do it outdoors. So given that it’s how unsafe It is to be in enclosed spaces, where you have a Thanksgiving meal, you’re not going to interact with your relatives on Thanksgiving, much less interaction with your friends, much less interaction with people outside of your household. And it can also be a problem to interact more with people inside your household that can cause its own set of problems, believe me, there’s going to be much less travel much less of these dynamics, you know, airline, travel is way down other public transport is way down. Car travel is somewhat up but still much lower than it used to be Haldol occupancy is much lower. So you have to think about traveling and not traveling. How do you replace that more time at home, feeling cooped up feeling like you’re in prison, I know that feeling. Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time in my home. And it’s not. I’ve been definitely trying to make it nicer with a long term perspective. But that’s not something that is necessarily pleasant to think that I’m going to spend much more time in my home. But you have to be ready for it, you have to prepare for it. And you have to plan for it. You have to figure out your fundamental needs. And those are really the main things you need to satisfy to survive and thrive in this pandemic, your fundamental basic needs. Those are the things you need to address to survive and thrive in this pandemic, your needs of safety, your needs a connection and your needs of self esteem. And if you know Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This is based on the research of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, adapted and modernized by current research on the hierarchy of needs, what we actually truly need, because Maslow was definitely ahead of his time. And some of the things that he wrote about has been superseded by more recent research that has been shown to be not as accurate as we’d like to be. So there are three areas that you need to be thinking about safety, connection and self esteem. And I’ll go into each area and what that means saved, you need to have two months of supplies, you might have a serious local outbreak, as happened in New York City, as it’s happening is still happening in a number of cities in Texas as they speak right now, which is the end of August, it’s happening a number of areas in Florida, Arizona. So this is an California This is not a great situation. So those areas find it much harder to go outside of their home. And it’s pretty dangerous to go shopping. So of course online delivery services are experiencing a lot of interruption. So you got to get two months of supplies, for your home, for your house of food, water, everything like that, how various household supplies, cleaners, medications, supplements, whatever you use, ask your doctor for a prescription enough for two months, get the pharmacy to write out the prescription for two months, there’s various ways you can ensure that they can do that, although they do it standard for a month to serve two months of supplies laid away. And I recommend food by the way that you go. Don’t try to empty the grocery store shelves, that is not a good idea. It’s gonna be more burdensome for you and more expensive and will deprive your neighbors of whatever was in the grocery store shelves. So I recommend that you go online and order in bulk, it’s going to be cheaper, and it’s going to be fairer to others. So that’s something you want to be thinking about in terms of safety. As part of the course of safety. You want to be thinking about your economic safety, and how will you ensure that your job is safe and the pandemic depends, of course in your job. But that’s something you want to be thinking about how your career will progress. Right now we’re in a situation where the people with the PPP loans are protecting many people’s jobs, but pretty soon, they’ll run out and many people will get laid off who aren’t expecting to get laid off. Connection, you want to be thinking about your connection to others, members of your household. So of course you’re spending a lot more time with them with your kids. If you have kids, with your romantic partner. You know if you’re let’s say spending time with your romantic partner with my wife, for example, right now we’re spending 24 seven together and that is Quite a bit harder than spending a more balanced amount of time. So we sat down, and we figured out how to avoid getting in each other’s faces in each other’s spaces quite as much, and make sure that we have a balance of how we interact and integrate our lives with each other. And that’s when I coach people as an executive coach. And as a life coach, that has been really helpful for people to think about, how do you manage your relationships, that is something to think through, and all aspects of your relationships to make sure that they’re balanced, and that you’re not harming your relationships with important members, important people in your life, and your romantic partners, your kids, it’s very, especially teenagers, it’s hard to deal with them being in the same household for them to deal with it for you to deal with it. But as well as elderly parents, let’s say you’re a caretaker, how do you support them, knowing that they’re much more vulnerable to COVID-19, people who are older, especially older males, but older women as well, are much more vulnerable to COVID-19. When you’re studying getting into your 50s, that’s when the vulnerability sharply increases. And of course, people who are under 50, if they have an underlying health condition of some sort, then people outside your household. If you have a romantic partner who is outside of your household, you must decide whether you’ll be in the same pod with them meaning you are someone who they are comfortable having been socially close to and the same for you. And that you share the same amount of risk in terms of exposure to COVID-19. The same goes for your friends, you will likely not want to make more than a couple of households outside of your own house or part of your pod. So you’ll have to decide which friends are close enough that you might want to have them as part of your pod. And also which are willing to abide by your guidelines for how you treat COVID-19 or which ones you will want to be socially distanced from wearing a mask and so on. And when you need to see them inside, outside, keeping 10 feet in six feet is really not enough. According to recent research, you really need about 10 foot distance outside to have some safety, and then your community right now it’s not a good idea to go to church, if you typically go to church, far from everyone does that. But right now, it’s not a good idea to go to church or other sorts of clubs, other sorts of faith based groups, other sorts of values based groups, secular secular groups, whatever. So all of those things in person are not a good idea unless they’re done outside within 10 feet distance apart from other people, which most of these things are pretty hard to do. Unless you’re part of a frisbee club, or something like that, or tennis playing club. So you want to figure out how to do virtual activities. A lot of these things can be done virtually virtual game night as part of my community activities, I do that. And so when you want to figure out how to replace the kinds of things you had with other people, that’s a connection. Finally, self esteem, this is something that’s really underrated. self esteem is an important part of having a good life and a good life experience and appreciating our fundamental needs. And there are free areas and self esteem that you need to be thinking about self confidence, self respect, and sense of mastery. So self confidence comes from a sense of control over the world. Not Of course, that you have control over other people, but that you have control over your fate over your circumstances. So the more control you can gain over your fate, the better your self confidence will be. And that means the first thing that means is figuring out how your household will survive and thrive for the pandemic, sitting down working out a plan by yourself and or with other members of your household. Who are the responsible adults in your household? And of course for yourself, you want to also have some activities by yourself so that other members of the household, how you will survive and thrive as a household in the pandemic that is going to be a great first step to building up that confidence, self respect that comes from feeling like you’re doing whatever you’re supposed to be doing feeling like you have power in your life and feeling that you can respect yourself and their ways. It really depends on each person, how they find that sense of self respect, what gives them that self respect, what gives them that sense that they are moving forward, and that they are pleased with the way that they’re moving forward in their lives. This is different from control over your faith and the self confidence that comes from that. This is a sense of self respect that you’re accomplishing your life goals. You’re doing what you would like to be doing. So That’s what self respect is for. And you want to figure out what gives you that sense that you are accomplishing your life goals, and then move toward that. And then with a sense of mastery, you want to make sure that you have mastery over skills and activities over your environment. To the extent that’s possible, this is somewhat different than those self confidence over your fate, shaping your fate. This is more about skills and activities in your environment. As you might be able to tell from the first I really from my office, I enjoy having lots of plants around. So that is something that gives me a sense of mastery, and this hobby, these plans, that’s a fun thing. For me, I enjoy that reading is something I enjoy, and for reading, learning about new things. So picking up new hobbies, new activities, or getting back into old ones, Enriching yourself, learning a new language, growing plans, making viral YouTube videos, whatever is enjoyable for you. Some outside activities, if you like to play sports, or go hiking, that’s a good time to do more of that. These are things that relate to that sense of mastery. So that means that you have skills that you’re building up learning information, knowledge, this is also a good time to develop in your professional career, especially if you might be worried about your professional career. So a sense of mastery also relates to your skills in your professional career. So professional development, this is a good time for that. And that’s a good set of activities to build up your sense of mastery. All right, definitely one sub. That’s what I wish to share about for this episode of the wise decision maker guide. And I encourage you to check out the blog that’s associated with this episode, which has a much more in depth case study of how to survive and thrive in this pandemic with where I talk through the example of a person executive for whom I both provide executive coaching, and life coaching. There you can see for this case, study how one person has handled this matter. So check out the blog linked in the show notes, and check out my two books on this topic, resilience, adapt and plan for the new normal of the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, and the blind spots. That’s of course, but the coronavirus pandemic itself. And then the blind spots between us how to overcome unconscious cognitive bias and build better relationships, on developing relationships with other people. And finally, never go with your gut, I would always recommend checking that out for basic fundamental decision making. And that’s going to be good, never go with your gut how pioneering leaders make the best decisions and avoid business disasters. So check those out as well that are also going to be linked in the show notes. And there’s going to be a way that you can check out the show notes and there’s going to be social media links. So follow us on social media to get more information about these topics and share all sorts of articles, videos and podcasts, audio interviews, there so it means you’ll enjoy checking those out. There’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. I also want to encourage you to make sure to sign up on your favorite subscription venues to get this video cast and podcast we broadcast both in the form of videos and podcasts. So wherever you’re checking out this episode, make sure of the wise decision maker show and make sure to sign up there to get more of the show. Please leave your comments on the show wherever you’re getting it, whether it’s on video or podcast, please leave your comments about what you thought of this show. And if you like it, click Like and share it with your friends. So that would be very helpful. You’ll want to help them survive and thrive for this pandemic. Alright, I hope this episode has been helpful for you and as always the wisest decisions to you, my friends. …