Background
“Bike-shedding” is a cognitive bias that often arises in group interactions. It refers to the tendency of individuals to allocate disproportionate attention and resources to trivial or familiar issues while neglecting more significant and complex subjects. The origins of this phenomenon can be traced back to Parkinson’s Law, a satirical book on bureaucracy and organizational inefficiency. In it, the author describes a scenario where a committee responsible for designing a nuclear power plant spent about 80% of its time discussing the color of the bike shed next to the plant, leaving only 20% for the technical specifications of the power plant itself.
Why does it occur?
The bike-shedding phenomenon can be explained by several psychological factors. For example, people may feel more comfortable discussing familiar topics as they offer a sense of familiarity and security. Additionally, individuals may seek to avoid making challenging decisions, so they focus and expand on minor details to appear productive or to check the box on their contributions to a subject. In contrast, matters considered complex and technical may expose knowledge limits. Therefore, people are less inclined to offer their opinions in those areas, resulting in important subjects being underdeveloped or even rubber-stamped through the checkpoints.
What is the impact on groups?
The implications of bike-shedding can be far-reaching and significant. By focusing too much on trivial issues, teams can waste valuable time, resources, and energy, resulting in a delay in addressing more critical problems. Moreover, bike-shedding can cause decision-making paralysis, where discussions about minor issues become so protracted that no progress is made on more pressing matters. Not only does this impact the task at hand, but it also creates a bottleneck for other projects or subjects that may be in the pipeline. The result is that the team is 100% busy but only produces minimal output.
How can it be mitigated?
Awareness is the first step in mitigating the adverse effects of bike-shedding. Leaders and project managers should understand that if left unchecked, 80% of all resources will go towards trivial matters and that deliberate effort on their part is needed to keep the priority on priorities.
Effective planning will help to ensure complex issues are given sufficient resources and attention. This can involve setting clear goals, objectives, and timelines, with frequent reviews to ensure milestones are met and expected quality is being achieved.
Establishing roles and responsibilities for team members and ensuring that everyone understands the relative importance of each issue will allow breakout sessions with subject matter experts. These sessions can help to create an environment where deeper discussions in smaller groups can occur to lessen the fear of not sounding knowledgeable in broader audiences.
Final Thoughts
By avoiding bike-shedding and focusing on critical issues, teams can make informed decisions that lead to better outcomes. This approach can also enhance team morale and productivity, as team members feel they are contributing to meaningful and challenging work and benefit from the resulting successes. Moreover, if it comes down to it, they can collectively agree not to have a bike shed if it means that we will have a power plant that can usher in meaningful changes in the lives of the beneficiaries.
In this case, it would be reasonable to answer that we don’t need a bike shed, rather than having a full binder on the unique color palette developed for the bike shed, especially when most staff either travel by car or take public transportation.
