“That's Not What I Heard” – Using External Memories to Bridge Team Perception Gaps
Inflection Point
How many times have you ended a meeting feeling that much was accomplished and that the group left with strong agreement about the issues and actions discussed? But the next day you initiate a conversation with one of the participants about one of the items discussed and get the response: “That’s not what I heard!”
Instantly, angst replaces your confidence in group alignment. “What else did others fail to hear or imagine that they did?”
At work here are the well-documented psychological and cognitive factors that influence how individuals perceive, process, and recall information. We’ve all experienced this whenever groups meet- in strategy sessions, GTM discussions, product planning dialogs, and even board meetings. The dimensions of the problem are worth enumerating on the way to a solution:
Selective Attention and Perception
Humans have a limited capacity for attention (some of us- very limited!), often focusing on specific aspects of a conversation while neglecting others. This selective attention is shaped by individual priorities, roles, and concerns. For example, a marketing professional may focus on branding implications while an engineer might prioritize technical feasibility, leading each to interpret the discussion through their own, uniquely tuned ears, thus altering what they “heard”. Important to have those differing perspectives- but the individual “tuning” must be understood by all.
Confirmation Bias
People tend to interpret information in ways that confirm their preexisting beliefs (Nickerson). During a meeting, participants may unconsciously latch onto statements that align with their viewpoints while disregarding conflicting information. This bias reinforces divergent takeaways even when consensus seems to have been reached by the nodding heads around the table. The nods confirm agreement with select individual views - not a consensus view.
Memory Distortion
Memory is reconstructive, not exact. Recall is influenced by the person’s existing mental frameworks shaped by prior experiences. These schemas guide perception and memory, leading individuals to fill in gaps with schema-consistent information, which can distort what people recall from a meeting. Over time, these distortions can amplify differences in interpretation.
Groupthink and Social Dynamics
In group settings, social pressures and a desire for harmony may suppress dissent or critical clarification (Janis). This creates an illusion of agreement, with individuals refraining from voicing doubts or seeking elaboration in the moment, only to realize later they had differing understandings.
Leveraging “External Memory” to Overcome “That’s not what I heard”
The solution to this phenomenon is not to slap people upside the head when they “hear” things differently than you did, (though that can be tempting.) Studies emphasize the importance of structured communication to combat these cognitive and social challenges. For example, during the discussion you can help the group overcome selective perception and confirmation biases by prompting participants to explain their perspective and to unpack the things that they both do and don’t agree with.
After the meeting, explicit documentation of the session’s understandings acts as an "External Memory" (Clark & Brennan), reducing reliance on fallible human recall. Collaborative tools and structured feedback loops further ensure alignment by allowing participants to clarify and refine shared understandings.
Creating this external memory is simply a matter of writing down the key insights and actions from a session, then sharing it for correction and comment. It’s burdensome, but not nearly so burdensome as is continued misunderstanding. Important to note is the fact that while transcripts and recordings are useful, they don’t solve this problem. Even AI summaries often miss the mark because what must be documented are the insightful takeaways from the session, and there’s no substitute for your own experience and insight in identifying these.
As much as we all like to make personal memories throughout life, business discussions are the time to make an external memory. This concrete “memory” of a session is the one that can turn: “That’s not what I heard” into: “Agreed, and here’s what I’m doing”.
BIll Haines, Partner