Emotions and Data - Look Twice, Leap One

When we are nervous, our perceptions change. 

Comfort levels, red flags, cool zones all change.

Today, we are all nervous about the impending economic collapse of the United States.  Part of this is watching for what we perceive as signs of that collapse.

So today Comscore noted that Google's searches were down 6% in February.  It took a few hours for people to really clue in on the fact that there were fewer days in Feb than Jan.

Is this a sign of economic collapse?

Larry Dignan and Mashable did a good job of calming this little tempest.

Larry said:

It’s a shortened month folks. It’s damn lucky that there was an extra day in February or we’d have to put Google on death watch. Simply put, there’s a lot of handwringing going on over a company that saw its core search share increase to 59.2 percent, up from 58.5 percent in January.

This particular piece of news isn't as interesting as the tendency behind it.  When creating metrics for performance measures with clients, they tend to gravitate toward the emotional issue that for them is a proxy for their greatest fears.  Sometimes this is measuring a symptom, but other times it's measuring an object of transference, which is even more dangerous.

In psychology, there are many manifestations and definitions of what is commonly called transference.  They all center around the redirection of emotions from a source of pain to something or someone else.  In an organization, this can be on the individual, team or organizational level.

When a baseball team dumps a season, they tend to fire the coach.  Why?  "Because you can't fire the team."  Yeah, sure, but the coach ends up being an object of transference.  In the end, the coach, personally, likely wasn't responsible, but firing the coach is an act in which the team diffuses the pain by exorcising an object of transference.

In Seattle we can see this in the fact that we were all convinced that Bob Melvin was not manager material when the Mariners went from top to bottom in the league after he showed up.  Well, Bob Melvin went to the Diamondbacks and is doing just fine as a manager.  Bob's ouster was therapeutic for the Mariners organization (including public perception), but it really wasn't a statement about Bob himself.

The problem is that everyone here still thinks it was Bob.  If I were to have gone in to the Mariners org at that time, their performance measures would have paid undue attention to Coach Performance.  It was where their perception of pain laid.

This means that these items become very necessary to measure.  It is tempting to dismiss these data needs.  "This is a symptom and not a problem" we might say.  Or "We think the real problem is over here."

Here's where things get tricky.  Symptoms Exist.  So you can not argue with someone that they are not in pain.  They are in pain and they are focusing on the object of transference.  And they can prove that object is a real source of pain.

So don't fight that.  Rather, measure it, with other things, and over time show the transference relationship with numbers.

If you are on the other end, working with consultants to improve your company or watching the economic outlook of the US, always keep in mind that you may be nervous.  You may be looking for signs to prove your fears.  I can guarantee you will find them. 

It is always less work to find things that justify your fears.  When data comes your way, check your emotions, if things are scary or make you angry - that's a sign to dig deeper.

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Tags: mashable, mariners, bob melvin, transference, management, performance measures, larry dignan

Comments

[Dave]

the "mortgage crisis" has put us in a "spiral" even though it is about 4% of the US economy. In Denver it's a big deal, since no one is buying or selling or trying to build homes (cf Las Vegas, hell even hartford). Of course, the banks shouldna been pushing ARM's, the buyers didn't know any better...giving out ARM's is a problem, now after the fact (and after repeated foreclosure problems in the banking industry going back to 1990 and beyond) NOW they want a solution with further devaluating the weak dollar. I'm gonna buy pesos.