Tag Archives: information management

Optimism Bias: How Your Half Full Glass Leaves You Vulnerable

Photo of a woman holding a large happy face sign in front of her face.There is a cognitive phenomenon called the optimism bias that leads humans to think that the likelihood of a negative event is lower than it really is. This is great when we are battling the day-to-day stresses of our lives but not so good when trying to plan for unexpected risks. In this blog post I will explore how the optimism bias can affect risk management.

Tigger or Eeyore

In a recent article for the Nonprofit Risk Management Center, Erin Gloeckner describes different personality types as Tiggers, or people who are always positive and bouncy, and Eeyores, those who are always down and negative. In reality, most of us fall somewhere in between but tend to have an optimism bias. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I tend to be an uber-Tigger and that can get me into trouble when determining the likelihood of failure or disaster. I was once asked to develop potential disaster scenarios for a project so that I could mitigate any risks associated with those scenarios. Try as I might, I could not come up with any realistic scenarios that involved failures. I realized my own bias towards optimism and asked for help from a project member I knew had a negative bias. That person was able to develop many different disaster scenarios and we created risk mitigation plans to counter each of them. True to my world, none of those scenarios ever happened but we were prepared nonetheless.

Business Planning

When managing information, it’s important to have a realistic sense of security. Start with preparing honest answers to these questions:

  • What are the chances of a security breach that leads to leaked confidential information?
  • What are the chances of a natural disaster that affects the operations of my organization?
  • What are the chances that I will lose a key person in my organization, at least temporarily?

It is important to have plans in place to counter the various threats that can happen in the course of doing business. Storms don’t stay away forever and key people don’t stay in one position their whole life. We can lessen the impact of these events by planning for them.

Personal Planning

I have talked about this in past blog posts but I think it is also important to evaluate potential risks in our personal lives. Ask yourself:

  • What are the chances that I could lose my current job?
  • What are the chances that I could suffer health problems?
  • What are the chances that a natural disaster could affect me or my family?

While it is not good to dwell on these scenarios to the point of distraction, it will give you peace of mind to know that you have planned to mitigate risks. These mitigation strategies should include making sure your skills and education are up to date and that you are exercising in order to fend off avoidable health problems. Set aside money to counter any unforeseen financial problems. Just as you plan for business disruptions, you can also plan for personal issues. These plans can help you sleep at night and be a Tigger all day.

Thoughts

If you are interested in learning more about the optimism bias, there is an excellent 2012 TED talk by Talit Sharot that covers the topic. Whether you tend to be an Eeyore or a Tigger, it is important to recognize your biases as you make plans for your business and your life. Do you already know your personal biases? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Congratulations to Our 2015 Graduates!

Photograph of AIM Program Director Kara McFall, EdDThis week’s post is the transcript of AIM Program Director Kara McFall’s 2015 commencement address. Commencement took place Saturday, August 15 on the University of Oregon main campus in Eugene.

To our 2015 AIM graduates, their families and supporters; our AIM faculty and staff; and all others who are here to join in the celebration of our 2015 AIM graduating class—welcome. I’d like to start by asking the graduates, faculty, and staff to stand and join me in honoring the families and friends who supported our graduates throughout the AIM Program. Every one of our AIM graduates has worked hard to achieve the right to stand here today as a graduate of the program; but every graduate also had the help and support of their families and loved ones, who agonized along with them over proper APA citations, assignment deadlines, and their nitpicky Capstone 1 instructor. The role that each of you played—as supporters of our AIM graduates—is an important one, and I would like to say thank you.

Today is a big day. Each of you started the AIM Program with a plan, and with hopes—for the knowledge you would gain in the program, the connections you would make with your classmates and faculty, or the impact this degree would have on your career upon graduation. I hope that now, with no looming paper deadlines facing you, you can stand back and take stock of what you achieved and realize that you achieved your hopes, or replaced them with even greater achievements that you couldn’t even visualize when you started this journey.

I also have hopes for you as AIM graduates. Most of you have more experience with me as an AIM faculty member than as the AIM director. My ten years in the AIM Program serving as a faculty member have been a pleasure, and I am honored to now serve as the AIM director. As I was preparing this first commencement speech, I thought about what I wanted to say to you as we all celebrate your achievements in the program. I decided to keep it simple and share my hopes for you as you graduate from the AIM Program. I’ll keep the message short and focus on my top three hopes for you.

I hope you met with adversity during your AIM studies. For some of you, this may have meant a team member who had a different philosophy of how to approach a team project, or who submitted work right before a due date while you liked to get the work done early. For others, it might have been a faculty member whose teaching style did not perfectly gel with your learning style, or a class whose content did not immediately capture your interest. Whatever adversity you were faced with in the AIM Program, I hope you took the opportunity to learn the lessons of compromise, seeking out guidance from trusted colleagues and advisors, delayed gratification, and working hard to achieve a goal even when the work required is unpleasant. As an instructor and now as director, I sometime receive phone calls and e-mails from students who are faced with challenging issues like team conflicts. I usually remark at some point in the conversation that I’m glad the student is getting the opportunity to work through the issue in my class; typically, the response to this statement is less than enthusiastic. But my point is that no one makes it through life without adversity. For our AIM graduates, we fully expect you to be successful in your chosen careers—to be leaders. You are the people that others will turn to when times are tough and there are adversities to overcome. I hope that the AIM Program provided you with sufficient adversity to hone your skills in meeting a challenge with grace.

I hope you missed out on some things while you were in the AIM Program—sleep, the luxury of kicking back on the couch when you got home from work, or even a special occasion. I recognize that this sounds cold hearted, so let me explain my point. No worthwhile goal is achieved without sacrifice. Getting a master’s degree is not meant to be easy or effortless; if it were, more people would pursue their master’s. Instead, you join only 12% of Americans who currently hold a master’s or professional degree. I hope you take away from the AIM Program not only new knowledge and abilities but also the recognition that any goal that is worthy of your time and passion is going to require you to sacrifice something in order to achieve it. Those of you who are parents already know the huge sacrifices that come with having children, mainly from loss of sleep and an astonishing diversity of ways that your kids can spend your money, but you also know that no sacrifice is too great for your children. I hope that your achievements in the AIM Program provide further proof that any meaningful goal is worthy of your time, your passion, and the occasional sacrifice.

Finally, I hope you take the time to appreciate the role your family, friends, classmates, and support system played during your pursuit of your the AIM degree. All of you are high achievers—you would not have pursued a challenging master’s degree, or even qualified to enter the AIM Program, unless you were goal-oriented individuals who know how to work hard to achieve those goals. But the pursuit of a challenging goal is rarely an individual effort. This can be a humbling thought for the high achiever, who has been taught that individual talent and hard work lead to success. At some point during the program though, you undoubtedly faced a situation where you couldn’t succeed on your own—you needed someone to take care of things at home while you finished a final paper, you needed an understanding boss to let you leave early to work on homework, or you needed to vent to a classmate in order to relieve the pressure you felt in a particularly challenging class. Instead of feeling like you need to rely only on yourself to achieve your goals, I hope that the AIM Program taught you that relying on others makes you more capable of aiming high and succeeding.

AIM class of 2015, I am proud of each one of you. I hope you will take the opportunity to keep in touch with us as you move into your next phase as AIM graduates. Congratulations to you, AIM Class of 2015!

The Ideal AIM Candidate

Cheerful interviewer shaking hand of an applicant in her officeAIM Applications

We are starting to see applications to the Applied Information Management (AIM) Master of Science Degree Program for Winter 2014. In reviewing them, it got me to thinking about what it is that I really look for in an AIM applicant and who will hopefully become a successful AIM student and graduate.

Resume

At the heart of it all, I am looking for a clear record of an applicant’s professional and academic history. There is no need to add extraneous or superfluous honors and activities if they do not support your core message. Less is more. If you can explain your history in a shorter format but still convey your message, fantastic; if you can find a fresh format, even better.

Transcripts

There is not a lot you can do about your transcripts at this point; they are what they are. BUT, if you did go through a period of distraction and failed grades during your undergraduate experience, please find a way to explain the situation. If you don’t offer any detail about that time period, then I will assume that you are OK with your record, but usually I am not. It could be a prediction of things to come.

Autobiography

Tell me about yourself and some of the choices and influences that brought you to where you are today. Tell me about some of the experiences that shaped your life. Sell me on your life story and why you are a good candidate for the AIM Program.

Statement of Purpose

Elaborate on your autobiography and tell me what it is you are looking for in life and how you expect the AIM Program to further your progress toward that goal. How can the AIM Program help you grow and develop to achieve your vision? Conversely, how can you help the AIM Program and the other students that you will be working with? What experiences do you bring to the program that will further the understanding of your fellow students and help enhance their experience? Finally, tell me about your experiences with distributed learning and distributed teams. If you do not have experience in these areas, tell me about your plan to succeed as a student in a distributed online learning environment.

Recommendations

Choose people that can speak to your skills and your potential to succeed in the AIM online graduate program. Choose people who may already be thinking about your next role, post graduation. Mentors are great because they know your strengths and weakness and hopefully realize your potential to succeed in the AIM Program as well as your potential to succeed and grow with your organization.

Thoughts

In short, we are looking for intelligent, hard-working individuals who have had some life successes already and who show promise for even greater success with help from the AIM Program. We are looking for individuals who are open to learning and open to helping others be successful in their learning.

If you are in the AIM Program or have graduated from the AIM Program, congratulations! If you are thinking about joining us, I look forward to meeting you soon.

 

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT topics that keep him up at night.

The Power of Information

Have you ever stopped to think about the power of information? During times of war, positional information, and information about the enemy gives each side an advantage. The current controversy over the use of drones is all about the collection of information and how that information is used. Now that we are squarely in the information age, are we collecting and using information responsibly?

Information As a Competitive Advantage

During World War II, the Axis went to great lengths to encode correspondence and information collected about the Allies. They were collecting information that could be used to give them a competitive advantage. We do the same thing in the modern corporate world. We use information about our product or service, our competitors, and our customers to gain a competitive advantage. We use information about our customer to persuade them to choose our product or service. Perhaps we know something about their personal choices or affinities or affiliations that we can target.

Stewards of Information

Have you ever thought of yourself as a “steward of information”? Do we take our responsibility seriously enough when it comes to handling information and aggregating information that leads to particular decisions? The information about potentially faulty O-rings was available prior to the Space Shuttle Discovery explosion but it was ignored. If we knew that we had information that could potentially affect life and death, would we take it more seriously?

Information Makes Our Lives Easier

On the positive side, information can make our lives easier. We may see some information gathering as intrusive but it can lead us to organize our lives and quickly get to the products or services that we want. A good example is Amazon.com. Through the many products that I have ordered in the past, they have compiled a profile of who I am and what I like and they can suggest a new product based on my past purchases. Some may see this as upselling or selling me things I don’t need, but their recommendations are generally right on.

Thoughts

I believe that if we thought about the true power of information, we would be more mindful of our work. Think through all of the times in history when information made a great difference. Think of Paul Revere and the information that he passed along in his famous 1775 ride to Lexington. It turned the tides in the Revolutionary War. You could say that that small piece of information changed history.

Do you work with information that could change history or save lives? Do you recognize it as such and take it seriously? Do you recognize the power of information in your life and work? Let me know your thoughts.

 

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT topics that keep him up at night.