Ravi, in Conversation

A small organization has many advantages that a large organization can hardly duplicate. One of them is the proximity between different stakeholders of the organization that fosters synergetic teamwork and an open-minded culture. As much as we enjoy the fruits of this benefit, we often overlook the lurking menace in the form of personal bias. Decisions in a small group often tend to be filtered based on personal judgment rather than what works best. When bias creeps into a small organization, the decision-makers award all the opportunities that arise in that organization to the same set of people, effectively letting them carry home the rewards and, at the same time, further enhancing their prominence among peers.

Some people combine the positive bias that supports them with their personal relationships to take up more opportunities than they can possibly handle. We cannot deny that there are a smaller percentage of people who are in the limelight because of their talent, even though they do not specifically nurture that idea. In smaller firms, the two groups of people mentioned above end up getting more responsibilities than they ever asked for. News spreads fast in a small organization and capable people who do not fall into either of the above groups feel under-utilized and unmotivated. Though we need to give a fair amount of weightage to personal judgment, we can easily see that determining just based on bias can be detrimental to a small organization. For instance, even though Person A and Person B have similar skills to perform a certain Task A, Person A gets selected if Person A had been selected to a analogous role earlier or if the selector has heard about Person A doing well in another unrelated and different Task B within the same organization. But as we can find out, this selection strategy is not always the best. In the first case, it is possible that Person B did not get an opportunity to demonstrate his or her prowess through prior experience though equally capable. In the second case, Person B might have more skill in that specific area of responsibility compared to Person A, even though the decision-making is clouded by Person A’s performance in Task B. But since the decision-makers have already made up their minds, Person B cannot do much to change their verdict. I suggest two alternatives to remove bias and create an environment that prevents some people becoming “more equal” than the others utilizing a favorable bias: distribution of opportunity and process-orientation.

Distribution of opportunity by making sure that one person does not get involved in too many activities at the cost of others who are equally interested or skilled is one way to solve this issue. A pertinent question at this point is the capability of Person B to perform. Assuming that small organizations are usually highly selective, we can imagine that each person is an iceberg, and that 80% of the responsibilities would not require more than 10% of their skills. Even otherwise it is usually the right opportunity that creates leaders, not higher skill, as we can learn from the biographies of world leaders. As we mentioned above, the takers of the first few opportunities usually stand to gain a positive bias for every future opportunity that may arise. By making sure that these first-movers stay away from grabbing every other opportunity, we may find potential talents who may outshine the first-movers. This actually works to the benefit of small organizations who cannot rely on a few people who take all the work and make (Hidden here is some suggestion for a person who joins a small firm and wants to make it big: Grab those first few opportunities – you’ll be there to stay!)

Process-orientation is another approach to solve the bias problem. Process-oriented firms are usually the big organizations – and they implement processes for completely different reasons. Big organizations want to make sure that their size does not constrain them to end up becoming the biblical Towers of Babel. By implementing strictly enforced processes for even minor activities, the big organization tries to make sure that each of its departments work towards the same objectives with complete transparency without a need to employ too many people to manage the show. Also, they can make sure that the work is done in the same manner even when the responsible people move or quit. In other words, big organizations avoid silos through process-orientation. The automation brought in by an efficient process is effective to a small organization where every decision-maker and even every individual acts as a silo, and is prone to personal bias. We need to notice that we often find the small organization to be lacking in efficient processes, mostly because the inputs and the feedback channels to a process have minimal contribution. Small organizations are often reluctant to adopt defined processes and treat them as a burden rather than as a necessary value-add. When we probe deeper, we can find that the culprit is usually the same – it’s personal bias that makes the implementation of processes complicated in a small organization!