Motivated Reasoning

 

In the last reflective journal,  I touched on how Motivated Reasoning needed to be more prevalent for my entrepreneurial ventures to be designed for

people first instead of product first.

 

Scout Mindset

 

The Scout Mindset is what I had to develop after failing  a couple of times through Motivated Reasoning antics in my business ventures. I work in the

software development space building solutions for clients with my able team at and for the longest time we used a product first approach to do work.

 

This was firstly based on the fact that all our team was made of engineers who had been conditioned with  a soldiers mindset on executing tasks.

Secondly we took problems at a face value without questioning a WHY things are the way they are. This ultimately led to us building products RIGHT

instead of building the RIGHT products.

 

I had to recondition my approach to all this through changing my role from engineer to a more people facing role in business development and

marketing. This put me in a better touch with people’s problems and understanding what their needs are.

 

One key aspect in the Scout Mindset is curiosity in understanding the situation at hand without being biased towards any side. In a software

development context, this means gathering requirements from clients without being aligned towards suggesting a seemingly appropriate solution for

them.

 

This was hard initially coming from a  product development background with a ready solution always in mind. I had to cultivate a Scout Mindset in

understanding the scope at hand and approaching it in an impartial practical manner.

 

Scout Mindset in Human Centered Design 

 

Human Centered Design (HCD) is an iterative thinking process that places the people you are trying to serve and other important

stakeholders at the center of design, innovation and implementation process.

 

HCD is mostly used in designing solutions in communities or organizations where a major changes needs to be done in the way things work. The

Scout Mindset is an essential tool during Human Centered Design since the process needs to be done without any bias towards the prevailing

conditions/environment.

 

Within the last month, I had sessions on Human Centered Design on how to Ideate and Prototype for problems in the right way. The concept of

Meeting people where they are stuck out for me through immersing yourself in the lived experiences and context of those you seek to understand and

engage in the design process. The Scout Mindset comes in handy when immersing yourself in this process and activities.

 

Autonomy vs Sociality;

 

In structured societies, Motivated Reasoning  is rife since many people are doing the same activities on the same frequency. Its  easier to form biases

since their is more than enough evidence to support the reasoning.

 

Sociality is the extent to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups and form societies. Autonomy on the other

hand, is the ability to make informed uncoerced decision in a situation. A Scout’s Mindset cultivates the aspect of autonomy in a social setting since

decisions are based on logic and not emotions. A classic example is during Voting. Many people vote for the same people because they feel him and

are on the same frequency while a few follow a logical mindset during the process.

 

Scout Mindset in the Job Market

 

Curiosity in work places may have two adverse effects; it may lead to appreciation (and possibly a promotion) or firing where its disapproved.

In rigid organizations, creativity(curiosity) is not normally appreciated since it defies the way things are done traditionally and opposes the structure

of doing things. Though this has been the narrative for decades, the aspect of Scout Mindset is being appreciated in more and more organizations and

they are finding more better ways to do things creatively from their staff.

 

 

Fact Questioning : moving from the soldiers to scout’s mindset

 

I have to be honest, despite learning the intricacies of the Scout Mindset and the advantages it offers I am still battling with the Soldiers Mindset due

to years and years of conditioning. I still work towards being impartial in the decisions I make and having a more curious approach in the things I

don’t like (often) since they might just provide a different path  of doing things I have traditionally done in conventional methods.