185 Posts Found

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David Snowden | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, Thought

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Decision Making, Learning, Organizational Behavior

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Catherine McCarthy, Tony Schwartz | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Storytelling, Thought

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.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lyle D. Feisel | Source: Tau Beta Pi | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Emerald Now | Subject: Decision Making

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.

Content: Quotation | Sources: Harvard Business Review, Six Rules for Effective Forecasting | Subjects: Decision Making, Future

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.

Content: Quotation | Source: TIME | Subjects: Decision Making, Risk Management

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Source: USC School of Law Commencement – May 13 | Subjects: Decision Making, Wisdom

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Source: USC School of Law Commencement – May 13 | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Decision Making

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.

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Decision Making, Problems / Solutions

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

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subject: Decision Making

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Sources: DQI, Leadership and Decision Making | Subjects: Decision Making, Leadership

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

Content: Quotation | Source: Chief Executive | Subject: Decision Making

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.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Problems / Solutions

The human condition can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all experiences are of the past, all decisions are about the future. The image of the future, therefore, is the key to all choice-oriented behavior.

Content: Quotation | Source: The Wilson Quarterly | Subjects: Decision Making, Future

The value of most frameworks lies not in changing a manager’s initial intuition but in clarifying the issues that arise when managers with different instincts try to debate the right course of action. A structured framework can transform the debate from a battle of guts, ultimately resolved on the basis of reputation, power, and eloquence (often in that order), into a comparison of the assumptions … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Strategy

People tend to overvalue advice when the problem they’re addressing is hard and to undervalue it when the problem is easy.

Another advice-related bias I’ve found compels people to overvalue advice that they pay for.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

Confronting doubt involves coming to terms with differences in values. How does one choose between two valued objectives: safety versus liberty, scientific discovery versus the sanctity of human life, individuals versus groups? Sometimes we overcome doubt with faith, sometimes we privilege one set of values over another. And sometimes we just live with the burden of making choices when there are no easy answers.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Values

Facts and evidence are great levelers of hierarchy. Evidence-based practice changes power dynamics, replacing formal authority, reputation, and intuition with data. This means that senior leaders – often venerated for their wisdom and decisiveness – may lose some stature as their intuitions are replaced, at least at times, by judgments based on data available to virtually any educated person. The implication is that leaders need … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Sources: Evidence-Based Management, Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior