Latest Objective Book Cover

This is my latest book cover, influenced by Daniel Kahneman, and his latest book, Noise.
From an interview I heard today, he seems to be saying, how we can overcome overconfidence in organizational decision-making. My take is that confidence is the goal but overconfidence or underconfidence is not. Now, rather than using the old cliché and thinking of “Let’s agree to disagree” my handbook is the next step moving towards “Let’s agree to object”. Objecting to overconfidence and the behaviors that come with it. And objecting to underconfidence also, if I want to be fair.

Overconfidence – can be identified by people’s behavior ranging from:

1. Aggressive, angry behavior, (tone, volume, expletives, body language).
2. Use dogmatic and absolute language “never”, “always”, “I am right..”, “You are wrong..”.
3. Refusing to acknowledge or apologize for poor or offensive behavior when pointed out.

underconfidence – can be identified by people’s behavior ranging from:

1. Submissive, passive behavior,(tone, volume, body language).
2. Use passive language “maybe we can do…?”, “can we do…?”.
3. Failing to object or hold people to account for their aggressive behavior.

confidence (aspirational) – can be identified by people’s behavior ranging from:

1. Objective behavior, (tone, volume). ie. neither aggressive or passive behavior.
2. Use objective and qualifying language, “to me we..”, “in my opinion we…”, or “I think we..” etc.
3. Objecting to aggressive behavior in real-time, holding offenders to account for their behavior during a dispute.

Who decides – So how do we judge who is what and when? Well…we try resolve our internal disputes in person, direct and in real-time using Object123, and if unsuccessful only then do we let our network of peers decide by posting any unresolved disputes onto the network to be reviewed.
If still unresolved we finish with a zoom call and our peers vote and make a recommendation.

“Very interesting point Desmond, democratize organizational power, as we do political power so (we) can vote people out”.

Timothy R Clark author of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

We use DisputZ.com for the network and Object123.com as the objection procedure