Episode 94: The Five Monkeys - Because That is the Way We Have Always Done it

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall" your weekly podcast making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and Founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.

As always, I can't thank you enough for joining me, Randall, here on this edition of "Around with Randall". Today's discussion, conversation, podcast is about that age-old saying that many of us just shake our heads at, but that's the way we've always done it. I'm sure like me you've heard this in various contexts in various ways in our professional life. And today we're going to talk about what this is, what it means from a psychology perspective, how it applies to the nonprofit world, and a couple of examples. But most importantly the tactical - how you can overcome this. There's a different way of looking at this phrase, and really it's the story of the five monkeys.

Originally coming from Psychology Today and author Michael Mikalto talked about it in this manner ,there are five monkeys in a cage and there's a ladder and on the top of the ladder are a bunch of bananas and the monkeys naturally want the bananas so they start up the ladder and every time they do, a human being sprays them with ice cold water and they learned quickly that as much as they want those bananas they're not going to climb that ladder.

After enough of this effort one monkey is removed and a new monkey is put in his place and that new monkey looks up sees the bananas, starts up, and is immediately ripped down by the other monkeys because they know they don't want to be sprayed with the ice cold water. Well very shortly another monkey is replaced with one that was there originally, and he sees the the the bananas and starts up the ladder, and he's pulled down. And this sequence goes over, and over, until all five of the original monkeys are are exchanged and the latest and last monkey starts up the ladder, and remember none of the original monkeys are there, and they all pull him down.And the thought process is very simple. None of them were there when the original issue happened, but that's the way it's always been done, and if you were to have the ability to ask the monkeys why are you pulling that monkey down, since none of them were original to the spraying, they would tell you well that's the way it's always been done.

This is all based on research done in 1967. A little different variety, not a ladder, monkeys, but some similar premises are by GR Stevenson, psychiatrist, psychologist about this work. About understanding this concept, and this concept has a name. It's not just this is the way we've always done principle, it's actually confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is really caused when we look to interpret or favor or recall information in a way that confirms what we do and what we know, even if there is a data, or information, or others that can contradict it and probably prove it wrong. It's always been done this way. It's so frustrating because data is out there to tell us to look at it differently. We see this in other industries.

So for many years, if we use the airline industry, the way it was always done is is the pilot was completely in charge and everybody, particularly the co-pilot, in days when there were flight engineers as well, would acquiesce to whatever that decision was and what they found was, is that that's a bad idea. Because maybe the co-pilot sees, feel something differently. And now aviation has gone to the system where the pilot still has the final say but they build the protocols so that they work together and they both have the ability to chime in and say, wait a minute, we have standard procedures. This is deviation from that.

We see this all the time in our offices, whether it's, which we'll talk about here in a second, simple protocols of how money's cash to how we raise money, to the types of activities we choose. There are some other principles, psychology, beyond confirmation bias. Another one's belief perseverance and that perseverance is an unwillingness to admit that there's something incorrect in a process or activity or something. Particularly when it's been announced - i.e gosh it's a and so you stand by that as long as possible because human nature says we don't like to be wrong. And in fact some of our greatest leaders are the ones who admit they're wrong and they adjust. But first belief perseverance would tell us it's very hard to do.

I see this in my nine-year-old, and we work a lot at home on number one, if you're gonna say something you gotta have the data to back it up. Number two, it's okay to admit gosh I didn't quite get that right. We also know irrational prima primacy effect, which is a reliance on information that we learned early on in life. You see this with kids in that if they learn something, I think about sports because that's the world I live in, that they learned a rule. Let's say and I think of golf because golf's made up of really arcane crazy rules which I absolutely love all of them. But you learn a rule wrong and that affects your defense of it because you learned it on early on in life. And then you learn later that rule is different or heaven forbid it changed.

Illusory correlation is also an important factor. Didn't realize we were going to get so much psychology here on "Around with Randall" but it's where we falsely connect two things together. And that, we think of them now, as intertwined cause and effect really is what we're talking about. Then an event or something of that happens and sometimes we, this, is where superstition comes in. You know I think about, you know, you wear and I tend to do this, you wear the same shirt when your football team plays because you believe it's going to bring them good fortune. I don't think that's probably true but it makes you feel better when we start looking at this confirmation bias, belief preservation, irrational primacy effect, illusory correlation. It's all based on this, what we know, as well that's the way we've always done it.

And the reason why, or any one of those or all of those four, and it's frustrating particularly if you're new into an organization or you've come in from another place and they do it a little bit differently and you can't get anybody to look at it, think about it differently people get set in their habits. And habits are hard to break. And they can be emotionally painful to break. So as a result all of these things are bringing us to this moment where we're like, what are we supposed to do here? So let's use some examples.

In the nonprofit world of where any one of these or all of these play an effect, these are more of a more high-level. These aren't even like the process inside your office. Let's start with the big one, the idea of major gifts versus events versus annual giving. Whether it's the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy or The Association for Fundraising Professionals, AFP, AHP, Nonprofit Times does a tremendous, huge report on giving, local giving. I think about what goes on here locally in Omaha. There's a great organization that pulls some data together, NAM, Nonprofit Association of the Midlands. They're all telling us the same thing. That the best ROI we can have are major gifts, and I define major in this case as major over a certain dollar figure. Planned gifts, you know, anything that's a bigger dollar ask, solicitation and gift. And yet we are constantly being drug back into over saturation of events, golf tournaments, galas, and other things. The more sophisticated the philanthropy, the less likely we are to be drug back in.

So when we think about academic medicine we think about high-level universities. They're, I'm not saying they don't do any special events, but what they do is they prioritize their limited resources on driving major principal gifts into their process because they're willing to look at the data. But this mantra of well, this is the way we've always done it, for a lot of organizations whether it's board driven or staff driven puts us into these events and it drives me crazy. I'm not opposed to an event in the right context. But when you have two or three it's pulling your time, your resources, your talent. Two activities aren't going to generate as much revenue. We all know what the data says. The question is how do we change it?

I'll give you another one one that I've spoken about for most of my career, although I didn't have the data to figure it out. Until recently, the idea of portfolio size when I began in this profession, the argument was well you need a portfolio as a major gift officer of 125 people. And the first conference I ever went to, a case conference, I that was the presentation and I walked up afterwards and said where did the 125 come from and you can predict what they were going to say...that's the way it's always been. That's best practice. Where's the data, I asked, because I'm a pain in the backside. For 15 years I kept asking, where's the data? Tell me how we know this is the right number. No one could ever prove it. And then Northwestern did something that was really cool, is they ran a study internally and they found out that the average portfolio size was about 115, so in the ballpark of their gift officers. And yet 80 plus of them weren't solicited. So they forced their gift officers to reduce the portfolio to 40 and the rule was generically that they had to ask those 40 people this year. And after looking at it for two years they then realized that gifts went up in terms of dollars by 600 percent! They doubled the number of solicitations, and they talked to the gift officers, and they said we were able to get rid of paralysis by analysis. We actually knew who to talk to because we only had 40 people to worry about. EAB, which is another consulting group, looked at in more mass numbers. Hundreds of gift officers. And they found out the most successful ones were the ones that had portfolios somewhere between 50 and 80.

Lower portfolio sizes generate more revenue because we concentrate gift officer activity on the things and the people that are going to drive revenue this year. The biggest opportunities. And yet I'm still working with people who say, but 125. They may give some day but they haven't given you to you money in 10 years. Why are we still worried about them? Because that's the way we've always done it.

Who to mail to? How to mail to them? The traditional model of mailing, and well artificial intelligence is coming in and it can help inform us, not only who major gift prospects are but who I think about. The work that Nathan Chappelle, and Aristotle, and Donor Search are doing, they actually can tell you who to mail to, and more importantly who not to, so you can eliminate them. But yet we need to mail to everybody because that's why we've always done it. When we go outside of the specifics of philanthropy, but to a key component is and are those leaders in our organizations who don't come out of philanthropy. In hospitals, it's the c-suite. In education, it's deans and professors and other educators. You may have, you may be the chief advancement or development officer but you have a CEO who's not a fundraiser. Their view of philanthropy, this is the way we've always viewed it. This is how I viewed it in my career, and in some ways this goes more into the belief, preservation, and primacy effect meaning they've known that it's hard to get them when they're 50, 60 years old. And they've always thought of philanthropy in this way. Will you go do it instead of - wait a minute - this is an organizational-wide effort. And the CEO needs to be a part of this process, that is because that's the way we've always done it.

So what I've only known, the size of our foundation and community boards. Well we only need to be this size 12, 15 people. But yet their role has evolved. That's also one where we need referrals from them - two to four per year. Let's say we'll only have 12 members on the board. That's not enough. Should your foundation board be 49, 41 or 38 or a larger number because the role has changed? All of these are examples the question becomes how do we get past it? H

ow do we help groups of people maybe starting with ourselves, our office, our organization, our boards, the community get past this idea of confirmation bias? That's the way we've always done it. Number one, you have to regularly challenge your core beliefs. You have to be open enough to say what I've known, what I've done, let's take it off the table. Is it the right thing? And that's hard because sometimes those become part of who you are, and the challenge is to become more of the person who sees change rather than, or acceptance of new data rather than this is the way we've always done it. That's a challenge to self, and it may be a challenge to a core group. And who they are and who they believe they are. Always question conventional wisdom. Always. It doesn't mean it's wrong, but if you're not questioning it then at the end of the day you're just accepting it. It's always what we've done. Use data, science, facts to drive decisions. I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of in consulting, the work that I do, is the things I recommend I have numbers to prove. Most of them are research and data from other places, but I'm giving them attribution and I'm utilizing to say, look we have to look at this differently. If you use data process what you end up with is a better result because you'll do the things that will drive the most effective end product that you're looking for.

If you're wanting to figure out how to do something - planning, strategic vision, or just annual planning, don't start from where you ended. Start fresh because if you start from where you ended in some ways the analysis and thinking is the same as what happened before. Be willing to start with a blank whiteboard. If you're going to do something even though you've done it 50 times, is there a different way of looking at it?

Find people that will bring you an opposite view and accept their ability to explain their vantage point or their view. If you have people come in and speak, that think oppositely then you do, but you're not willing to listen to them, then it was a waste of time. Be willing be open enough to invite people in, and be willing to listen, to be that challenge to what you think and do.

That idea of collaboration with other people is quintessential. If you are doing planning and it's the same four people, six people, nine people all the time you're gonna end up with confirmation bias because there's no outside view. So artificially, you may have to bring in someone to help you see a different perspective, and maybe that only means movement of 10 degrees or 15 degrees, but that could be the difference between good and great.

Lastly, if you find yourself digging in, think about this idea of what we're talking about today and challenge yourself. Don't be afraid to realize, oh wait a minute I'm digging in here. Is this what I think it is? If you do these things, if you challenge yourself, if you question that wisdom, if you bring in new people, could you, can you bring in that concept? Is the opposite possibly true? Do you use data? All of these things will help you get to the best result and that's our goal. And that's what confirmation bias sometimes precludes is allowing us to get to the result we want.

Philanthropy needs less confirmation bias because we're needed more today than ever, so we can maximize limited resources to drive the best results. And if we do that, and we do some of this, you'll see improvement in the things that you do.

Don't forget check out the pod or the, excuse me, the blogs at hallettphilanthropy.com. Posting them two or three a week, 90 second reads, just ways to kind of challenge some things and see different aspects of the world. Also if you'd like to communicate with me right here on "Around with Randall" that's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. And if you are watching this on youtube or apple listening or spotify or iheart radio, wherever, leave me a review, share with a friend. Don't forget, you are important to what goes on in this world. Philanthropy and nonprofit work is more and more essential. We see it every day, whether it's basic services and food and shelter to health care to education. Remember my favorite saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. You are someone who's making something happen, partnering with others who want to do the same to help those and help the causes we believe in, or wondering what happened. And I can't imagine a better way to spend a professional career. And I hope you feel the same. We'll see you right back here on the next edition of "Around with Randall." And don't forget make it a great day!