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Vague wording — the curse of bad assessments… and how to fix it
Have you ever been asked to assess and compare complicated entities such as projects, product proposals, or business plans using “vague” wording such as “good”, “medium”, and “high”? Was it difficult? Did you agree with colleagues on the assessment?
Examples of vaguely formulated assessment statements and scales include:
- The project has a low/medium/high chance of success in 5 years.
- The product shows poor/ok/good/excellent performance compared with competitors.
- On a scale from 1–10 rate if you believe the product will exceed expectations (1=low, 10=very likely).
The key problem in such statements is that vague words are subjective and context-dependent. Their understanding differs from person to person and even per person depending on a lot of external factors. For example, day-of-week, how hungry you are, and even if your favorite football team won or lost on the weekend. Judgment and understanding of such words are highly subjective and carry a lot of noise — see Nobel-winner Daniel Kahneman’s book on Noise. Please use my affiliate links to support my writing: amazon.com — amazon.co.uk — amazon.de.
How can we reduce the influence of such wording when assessing complicated entities?
