Sound-Up Governance

Each week, we will release two illustrated definitions of corporate governance jargon in order of increasing complexity. In this instalment we have the definition of "bias". Check the episode thumbnail for an illustration by Nate Schmold.

Originally published Feburary 20, 2023

What is Sound-Up Governance?

The real impact of corporate governance isn't about compliance or structure or policies, it's about the conditions that impact decision-making. Sound-Up Governance features fresh perspectives to help boards and executives to be a bit better tomorrow than they were yesterday.

Group think is an example of a bigger collection of weird things that our brains do to help us make decisions quickly when we don’t have enough information or time or patience or intelligence. Basically, our brains sometimes make decisions for us so fast that we don’t even have time to realize that there was a decision at all. It’s like when you see those weird cakes that look exactly like a piece of fruit or something. Your brain just kinda decides that you’re looking at an apple. It happens so quickly that it would never occur to you to wonder if you’re looking at a cake. You’ve seen a million apples. You know what apples look like. It’s an apple.

What happens when someone cuts into it revealing a chocolatey, creamy, cake? Instead of feeling excited to eat chocolate cake, you feel something else – maybe amazement, betrayal, or nausea – because your brain was so convinced it was right that it’s hard to accept any new information, especially if that information proves that you were wrong all along. Every part of that experience happened unconsciously and automatically! That is, the decision that you were looking at an apple happened without you doing anything or even knowing that there was a decision at all. So did your rejection of the cake-ness of the apple-shaped cake.