In 1975, psychologist Ellen Langer first described a very common cognitive bias among human beings: the illusion of control. According to this Harvard professor, the phenomenon consists of believing that our actions have an influence on the outcome of events that, in reality, are completely outside our domain. Have we ever thought that choosing lottery numbers consciously would increase our chances of being millionaires? Or have we seen each other in front of the television with that shirt that favors my team winning the games? For it is the illusion of control.
This logical dysfunction is very present in games of chance, plagued by rituals with the aim of subjugating their random essence. But in business management we can also find some reliable cases of the illusion of control, which manifests itself when the management team is convinced of exercising active leadership, without realizing that the organization truly advances due to the effect of inertia. And it is that, unfortunately, some executives drive with an imaginary steering wheel, which is not connected to any steering system. So while the driver is turning right, the vehicle may be turning left.
One cause of this problem may be the presence of de facto counter-powers, normally installed in intermediate ranks, which hinder any significant change that threatens the status quo. They are those people who have a certain ascendancy over the key areas of the organization and who apply the philosophy of the dog in the manger. They tend to praise the maneuvers of their bosses behind the wheel, at the same time that they cut all the transmission belts. In these cases, the best solution is to identify the powers in the shadows to try to add them to the cause (or separate them from it).
But the illusion of control in organizations can also be due to insufficient managerial management, which does not take into account the two key elements when translating intentions into actions: communication and objectives. And it is that to get people to orient themselves towards a certain course, you must first make sure that they have the necessary information and then set the milestones that allow them to reach the goal.
In this sense, descending channels must be available through which workers receive information that helps them align their performance with the will of the company. Although internal communication is usually seen as the little sister of external communication, we must not forget that it is the tool that allows us to point out the paths and motivate us to travel them. In fact, there are times when the organization does not turn to the right for the simple fact of not knowing that its managers have decided to turn to the right.
Once the trajectory has been traced, the objectives are the factor that allows the organization to move and inject the appropriate speed. For this reason it is so important that the indicators are a faithful mirror of the strategy, that the individual dashboards are integrated with the collective ones and that there are real incentives at the end of each goal. As the CEO of a well-known parcel company says: "I had been preaching for years that we had to treat our customers' parcels well, but I didn't get it until we set ourselves clear quality goals." Thus she managed to undo the illusion and take control.
