Decision roundup
I like reading about how other people make decisions. A reader, Dustin Walper, recently sent me a link to a post he wrote called “Fast Leadership - Stop Thinking and Start Deciding.” He basicallly advocates a Gladwellesque “Blink” style of decision making, which I think has merit in the right time and place.
It’s a good post, but one thing I thought was missing was some kind of feedback mechanism that allows you to take stock of how your decisions worked out over time. Rob wrote a good post on this and I think it makes a ton of sense, though I haven’t implemented it myself yet. Might be time.
Also see this nice roundup of decision making links over on Lifehack.org.
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POSTED IN: management, productivity
8 opinions for Decision roundup
Dustin Walper
Aug 29, 2006 at 6:47 am
I agree that some sort of feedback mechanism would make the concept more actionable. This is a ready-fire-aim approach, as Steve Pavlina might put it, and the only way to consistently improve would be to make adjustments based on how your decision holds up over time.
I would argue, however, that the extensive review procedure found in the post by Rob might be counterproductive because you would spend a lot of time trying to quantify something that is inherently unquantifiable. Hmmm, what is the perfect solution?
Bren
Aug 29, 2006 at 7:13 am
Could just be as easy as doing what Drucker suggests: keep a simple journal of decisions made. Review periodically and update with results when needed.
Ken Sheppardson
Aug 29, 2006 at 7:27 am
You must read Source of Power by Gary Klein. The title in terribly misleading. The Amazon review sums it up nicely:
“Gary Klein studies decision-making in the field, tagging along with firefighters, standing by in intensive-care units, and watching chess masters play lightning-fast “blitz” games to learn how people make choices with time constraints, limited information, and changing goals. From this research, he and his associates have developed a theory of “naturalistic decision-making.”"
Bren
Aug 29, 2006 at 9:35 am
@Ken: That sounds like a fascinating book–it just went on my ‘to read’ list. Thanks for the ref!
laurence haughton
Aug 29, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Gary Klein is a fantastic source. (It’s said that Gladwell is a just a user friendly interface for Klein).
Another great source is Guy Claxton and his “Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind.”
And the perfect solution is to stop insisting on a perfect solution. That’s just an excuse for doing nothing.
Carmine Coyote
Aug 29, 2006 at 6:37 pm
I think there is a basic confusion in much of Gladwellesque thinking between two kinds of intuition.
The genuine kind arises only after long periods of intense thinking, analysis, and experience. It’s what you see when a true expert seems to jump instantly to the right decision with seemingly no thought at all. That decision making is so swift and sure it looks like magic, but only because you are unaware of all the prior work that went into making it.
I’m a birder and novice birders often view experts with a kind of awe. These “gods” appear to be able to identify birds on the basis of something less that a glance in their direction. How do they do it? For a start, they have done it a lot, and I mean a lot, so they have internalized the general size, shape, and flight patterns of hundreds of bird species. Secondly, they have studied bird habitat for years, so they can instantly reject many supposed alternative identifications, purely by knowing those birds will not be found in this habitat. Most are also masters of remembering bird calls. The novice sees a blur disappearing into a bush. The expert sees exactly the same, only she recognizes the brief call it made as it flew. All this appears magical, but it’s just the result of long, slow, patient learning.
The other view of intuition, the Gladwellesque view, is about magic. It assumes that in some magical way, you can find the right answer with neither knowledge nor thought. It’s “proofs” are nearly all anecdotal. Of course anyone can find occasions when a decision made with every care fails, and contrast this with another occasion when jumping to a conclusion with no thought at all produces a terrific result. What is the cause? Chance. But people want “good” reasons for events and chance isn’t one that many people like. So, ignoring the wise counsel of the medieval philosopher William of Ockham (Occam’s razor) they invent a new entity (intuition coming from the unconscious mind) to account for what they have observed.
But then, as the founder of Slow Leadership, I would take this view, wouldn’t I?
laurence haughton
Aug 29, 2006 at 7:29 pm
True. Luck happens and most don’t account for it. But there’s more to good quick thinking (intuition) than pattern recognition.
Take a look at Klein and Claxton Carmine. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
As the guy who wrote, “It’s Not the Big that Eat the Small… It’s the FAST that Eat the Slow,” I was.
Dustin Walper
Aug 29, 2006 at 7:43 pm
@Carmine:
Certainly it would be expected of you to take such a position ;-) Honestly, it wasn’t a slight at Slow Leadership… it was just an easy reference to make to address an alternate opinion.
However, I would like to point out that I wasn’t advocating making intuitive decisions without doing any of the homework first. Research has generally indicated that if you gather all of the necessary information, your subconscious mind is better at sorting it out than your analytical conscious mind. I would hardly call this magic. Rather, it’s a function of brain chemistry.
I’m just not satisfied with the answer that every decision should be completely analytical, thoroughly documented, and reviewed upon completion. There’s no denying that some of the greatest minds in business are adept at making decisions that rely more on “intuition”, whatever the scientific definition may be.
However, I’ll admit there could be another side to this: being completely analytical tends to equate to being risk averse, something that will never jive well with the extremes of seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurship. It could just be more convenient to ignore rational thoughts in favour of taking broader risks.