Fred Allen

A committee is a group of men who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done.

Peter Drucker

Decisions are made well only if based on a clash of conflicting views. The first rule of decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement. It safeguards the decision-maker against becoming a prisoner of the organization (or culture).

American Management Association

In the Information Age, information was a relatively scarce resource that conferred competitive advantages on those who obtained it. In the Knowledge Era, by contrast, information is virtually free. We often feel we’re drowning in the stuff. In theory, the true competitive advantage stems from turning all this information into useful knowledge. It’s a nice theory, as far as it goes. The truth, however, is … [ Read more ]

David Maister

An expert’s job is to be right — to solve the client’s problems through the application of technical and professional skill. The advisor behaves differently. Rather than being in the right, the advisor’s job is to be helpful, providing guidance, input, and counseling to the client’s own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times; the advisor’s role is subordinate … [ Read more ]

Denise Caruso

Cost-benefit analysis can be an effective tool to analyze simple, one-dimensional problems, such as whether to install dividers on dangerous stretches of highway, where relatively unambiguous data is in abundant supply and there is little controversy. It also is a good way to elucidate the trade-offs for a given policy or regulation, or to produce a summary statistic about its economic efficiency.

But the cost-benefit method … [ Read more ]

David Snowden

Humans do not make rational, logical decisions based on information input, instead they pattern match with either their own experience, or collective experience expressed as stories. It isn’t even a best fit pattern match, but a first fit pattern match. The human brain is also subject to habituation, things that we do frequently create habitual patterns which both enable rapid decision making, but also entrain … [ Read more ]

Daniel Kahneman

Organizations are out there every day, making tons of decisions, but they aren’t keeping track of them. There are many factors within organizations that make them reluctant to learn from experience, so it’s a forlorn hope, but the goal would be to have dispassionate evaluations of past decisions, and to spend some effort in figuring out why each decision did or did not pan out. … [ Read more ]

Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy

The most effective way people can change a story is to view it through any of three new lenses, which are all alternatives to seeing the world from the victim perspective. With the reverse lens, for example, people ask themselves, “What would the other person in this conflict say and in what ways might that be true?” With the long lens they ask, “How will … [ Read more ]

Lyle D. Feisel

Lyle’s Law of Certitude: The more certain you are that you are correct, the more imperative it is to consider that you might be wrong.

Stephen H. Baum

Quick decisions based on wrong assumptions lead to quick trouble. Quick decisions based on a faulty analogy do the same. “Ready, fire, aim” is a prescription for poor marksmanship.

Richard Neustadt asks, “are you facing a problem that can be solved or a condition that must be treated?” Mistaking one or the other can be painful.

Are you using a flawed analogy? Assumptions that are not true? … [ Read more ]

Paul Saffo

The problem — and the essence of what makes forecasting hard — is that human nature is hardwired to abhor uncertainty. We are fascinated by change, but in our effort to avoid uncertainty we either dismiss outliers entirely or attempt to turn them into certainties that they are not.

Jeffrey Kluger

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

Charlie Munger

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I’ve reached that state am I … [ Read more ]

Charlie Munger

Darwin paid particular attention to disconfirming evidence. Objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you’re going to be a great thinker. There, we’re talking about Darwin’s special attention to disconfirming evidence and also about checklist routines. Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors. You should have all this elementary wisdom and then you should go through a mental checklist in order to use … [ Read more ]

John S. McCallum

Listing all the options for solving a problem benefits decision making in a number of ways beyond merely encouraging proper problem definition. It focuses the decision making process on rigorous analysis and away from ideology, assertion and who can yell the loudest. In the face of a comprehensive list of options, even the most passionate advocate has trouble with the simple question “What is good … [ Read more ]

Clayton Christensen

The way we’ve taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when it’s too late. The only way you can look into the future is with theory. And that’s a big leap for managers to take.

The key to good theory is good categorization–understanding the circumstances you’re in, and the circumstances you’re not in.

Charles Kettering

Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence.

Rushworth Kidder

The really tough choices . . . don’t center upon right versus wrong. They involve right versus right. They are genuine dilemmas precisely because each side is firmly rooted in one of our basic, core values. Four such dilemmas are so common to our experience that they stand as models, patterns, or paradigms. They are:
– Truth versus loyalty
– Individual versus community
– Short-term … [ Read more ]

Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn

It is astounding how many “dumb” questions, well timed, might have prevented poor decisions.

Edward C. Bursk

There is no surer way of putting problems across than to present them in a form as close as possible to that in which they actually occur, and the greater vividness and realism thereby secured will stimulate the ensuing thinking and discussion.