Based off the two other scenarios, "Decision Traps" and "Sources of Power", please compare one to the other in the following manner:
(1) Summarize the arguments of the "Decision Traps" attachment and the "Sources of Power" attachment.
(2) Address the fundamental differences between decision-making according to the "Decision Traps" scenario and the "Sources of Power" scenario.
(3) Come up with an example of decision and provide a response as to which approach appears more effective for that example (or if a combined approach is needed to get it right).
Don't just reiterate the key positions of each -- think through and carefully elucidate the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Sources of Power:
Anyone who watches the television news has seen images of firefighters rescuing people from burning buildings and paramedics treating bombing victims. How do these individuals make the split-second decisions that save lives? Most studies of decision making, based on artificial tasks assigned in laboratory settings, view people as biased and unskilled. Gary Klein is one of the developers of the naturalistic decision making approach, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced. It documents human strengths and capabilities that so far have been downplayed or ignored.
Since 1985, Klein has conducted fieldwork to find out how people tackle challenges in difficult, nonroutine situations. Sources of Power is based on observations of humans acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions. The professionals studied include firefighters, critical care nurses, pilots, nuclear power plant operators, battle planners, and chess masters. Each chapter builds on key incidents and examples to make the description of the methodology and phenomena more vivid. In addition to providing information that can be used by professionals in management, psychology, engineering, and other fields, the book presents an overview of the research approach of naturalistic decision making and expands our knowledge of the strengths people bring to difficult tasks.
In Sources of Power, Gary Klein studies time-constrained, high-stakes decision-making in the field and explains how people actually use their skills and experience to make decisions with real consequences.
Much of Klein's research is focused on the military and civil service, so you'll follow a team of firefighters trying to rescue a woman from a car hanging off the side of a bridge, observe an aircraft carrier officer order his gunners to shoot down an unidentified bogey, and observe the crew of Apollo 13 as they discover the reality of their situation, formulate plans, and adjust their goals and actions accordingly. Along the way, you'll be exposed to the key elements of Klein's "Recognition-Primed" decision-making model, which takes into account elements like experience, intuition, and mental simulation: factors that allow human beings to make extraordinarily complex decisions quickly and relatively accurately.
In Sources of Power, you'll learn about the importance of communicating intent and context, asking clarifying questions, using analogy and metaphor, and how to deal with uncertainty and lack of information. By understanding how people actually make decisions, you'll be equipped to provide your colleagues with the facts and context they need to make smart, informed decisions, and you'll have a better understanding of how to ensure your decisions are as good as they can possibly be.
Subtitled "How People Make Decisions", this book attempts to explore the process of decision-making from a perspective far outside the normal business-world-oriented theories. In business school, people are taught that the right way to make a decision is to define the problem, generate a list of possible solutions, evaluate all of the possible solutions, and then carry out a course of action. Klein spent twenty years studying decision making in the field, from firefighters to nurses in the emergency room, and proposes an alternative theory that describes how people make decisions in the real world ("Naturalistic Decision-Making"), calling it the "Recognition-Primed Decision Model".
Klein's interest in this area began when his consulting firm was asked to "study how people make decisions under time pressure" by the U.S. Army. Without a war to study, he chose to study firefighters, who often have to "function under the stress of having to make choices with high stakes". He went in believing in the "rational" decision-making methodology described above. But after observing and interviewing firefighters, he found that such a model did not correspond at all with what they actually did. In fact, one fireground commander, when asked about how he made difficult decisions, claimed, "I don't make decisions. I don't remember when I've ever made a decision." Klein was startled to hear this. When pressed, the commander "agreed that there were options, yet it was usually obvious what to do in any given situation." He was not listing options and comparing them, as the normal decision-making methodology would have. He was just reacting to the situation.
"The commanders' secret was that their experience let them see a situation, even a nonroutine one, as an example of a prototype, so they knew the typical course of action right away. Their experience let them identify a reasonable reaction as the first one they considered, so they did not bother thinking of others. They were not being perverse. They were being skillful. We now call this strategy recognition-primed decision making."
Klein goes on to explore how RPD works. What are the elements that let an expert immediately generate good options? How do teams work under the RPD model? What lets an expert quickly evaluate whether an option is good enough, and decide whether to move on to another option? He does this primarily through careful interviews and observations. His team focuses on a scenario, identifies the key decision points, and reviews them with the subject afterwards to see what they thought of at the decision point. It's an anecdote-based system, but a powerful one for generating a model. And when they have tested the system, for instance by studying how chess players of different levels handle time pressure, the results have supported their theories.
Part of the issue with the normal model is that it's completely unrealistic. In the laboratory, it is easy to study how people make decisions; you give them a goal, and some information, and examine how they use the information to move towards that goal. In the situations that Klein covers, the goals are undefined and can change on a moment-by-moment basis. The information is incomplete and disorganized, so you have to take your best guess, start acting on it, and then see if the situation evolves as you expect it to. For instance, he describes fire-fighters who go into a house, thinking that it's a small fire in the basement, then realize that it's a much bigger fire because it's spread up a laundry chute, switch priorities from putting out the fire to search-and-rescue, calling in a second alarm to get some more help.
The situation is evolving constantly, and an expert will know which elements are important to follow, and which are not. The expert has been in a situation enough times before that they can mentally simulate what should be happening, and recognize when things are deviating from their expectancies, which is a sign of danger. Another good example: a fire commander goes into a building for what he thinks is a regular kitchen fire. As he's scouting around, he realizes that it's not behaving like a normal fire. It's too quiet, and too hot. He doesn't like it, and pulls his team out of the house. A few moments later, the floor of the house collapses - the fire was actually in the basement. He had no idea that there was even a basement, but his experience let him know that something was wrong, and that he needed to figure out why the situation diverged from his expectations before he continued.
Klein goes into much further detail of how experts "see the invisible" (because they know what signs to look for), generate a course of action, mentally simulate the results of that action, and then carry it out. He also describes the non-linear aspects of problem solving; it's an iterative process, where you continually are updating your mental model with the results of what has occurred compared to your expectations. He devotes a chapter to the power of stories, a topic dear to my heart. He talks about the power to read minds, where if a commander communicates his intent clearly, not just of the plan, but of the overall goals of the plan, their subordinates can make the right decisions, even when those decisions conflict with the plan as laid out. He describes how teams function together, studying how the team has a collective cognition which can be developed by working together closely.
At the very end, he examines rational analysis and where it is appropriate and where it is not. In situations where the problem can be analyzed into basic components, rational analysis is a great tool. However, trying to force other situations into that form can be disastrous, because much of the relevant information may be lost. This is also why he says that teaching novices a set of rules as the only way to do things is misleading, and restricting experts to follow those rules can be dangerous. The path to expertise depends on learning the situations that generated the rules, understanding when to apply the rules, and when to break them. The whole point of having experts is to leverage their expertise, not to keep them from using it.
In Decision Traps, the authors indicated that most decision makers commit some kinds of errors, and they explore the components of those errors and the steps to rectify those common mistakes in decisions making. The authors drill into details the key characteristics that we can easily recognize and learn. They indicated that becoming a good decision maker is like becoming a good athlete. We need to examine the process of decision-making systematically and we need to work consistently to eliminate the errors we still commit in each phase.
The authors researches indicated that every good decision-maker must, consciously or unconsciously, go through each phase of decisions making process. In the book, they broke down the ten most common barriers that we often encounter in making good decisions. They are as follows:
1) Plunging in - Here, we beginning to gather information and reach conclusion without first taking a few minutes to think about the crux of issue you're facing or to think through how we believe decisions like this one should be made.
2) Frame blindness - Setting out to solve the wrong problem because we have created a mental framework for your decision, with little thought, that causes you to overlook the best options or lose sigh of important objectives.
3) Lack of Frame control - Failing to consciously define the problem in more ways than one or being unduly influenced by others.
4) Overconfidence in our judgment - Failing to collect key factual information because we are too sure of our assumptions and opinions.
5) Shortsighted shortcuts - Relying in appropriately on "rules of thumb" such as implicitly trusting the most readily available information or anchoring too much on convenient facts.
6) Shooting from the hip - Believing we can kept straight in our heads all the information you are discovered, and therefore "winging it" rather than following a systematic procedure when making the final choice.
7) Group failure - Assuming that with many smart people involved, good choices will follow automatically and therefore failing to manage the group decision-making process.
8) Fooling ourselves about feedback - Failing to interpret the evidence from past outcomes for what it really says, either because we are protecting our ego or because we are tricked by hindsight.
9) Not keeping track - Assuming that experience will make its lessons available automatically, and therefore failing to keep systematic records to track the results of your decisions and failing to analyze these results in ways that reveal their key lessons.
10) Failure to audit our decision process - Failing to create an organized approach to understanding our own decision making, so we remain constantly exposed to all the above mistake.
Dr. J. Edward Russo and Dr. Paul J. H. Schoemaker used some fairly simple methods and techniques to avoid the ten decision traps mentioned above, which are called the key elements in decisions making. The authors indicated that good decisions making can be broken into four main elements and they are as follows:
1) Framing - Structuring the question, this means defining what must be decided and determining in preliminary way what criteria would cause us to prefer one option to another.
2) Gather intelligence - Seeking both the knowable facts and reasonable estimates of "unknowable" that we will need to make the decision.
3) Coming to conclusion - Sound framing and good intelligence do not guarantee a wise decision. We simply unable to consistently make good decisions using seat-of-the-pants judgment alone, even with excellent data in front of us.
4) Learning from feedback - Everyone needs to establish a system for learning from the results of past decisions. This usually means keeping track of what we expected would happen, systematically guarding against self-serving explanations, than making sure we review the lessons our feedback has produced the next time a similar decision comes along.
The authors also review each barrier and the recommended steps necessary to address them.
Addressing the first barrier, the authors indicated a wise and timely meta decision base on four key elements above can help to avoid the decision trap one Plunging in when we start working on any major issue. We should spend time to think about the large issues we are facing. A Meta decision involves asking questions like "what is the crux of this issue? In general, how do I believe decisions like this one should be made? How much time should I spend on each phase-as the first guess." So before any major decision process is launched, review the Meta decision questions.
To address the second barrier, the authors indicated that from the greatest genius to the most ordinary clerks, we have to adopt mental frameworks that simplify and structure the information facing us. But often than not, people simplify in ways that force them to make the wrong choices and get into the decision trap number two frame Blindness. Therefore to avoid it, we should attempt to understanding frames. No frame, indeed no way of thinking, can consider all possibilities and no one can completely avoid the dangers of framing. However, we would pay dearly if we do not even know the problem exists. Here, the authors' analogy of a window frame nicely illustrates the difficulties. Architects choose where to put windows to give a desired view. But no single window can reveal the entire panorama. When we choose which window to look through, or even if we decide to keep track of what's happening through three different windows, we can never be sure in advance that you will get the most useful picture. Thus, framing of a decision inevitably sets boundaries; it controls what is in and what is out. Moreover, not all elements that are "in" will be treated equally. Our frames tend to focus us on certain things while leaving others obscured. Frames have enormous power. The way people frame a problem greatly influences the solution they will ultimately choose. Also, the frames that people or organizations routinely use for their problems control how they react to almost everything they encounter. Therefore, when we face a new issue, good decision-maker create a decision frame specifically designed for dealing with that problem.
Decisions makers fall into the decision trap number three, Lack of Frame control because we often do not choose frames. We stumble into them and found ourselves using inadequate frame. Therefore, if we match our own frame to the frames of people influence us, we can improve our performance significantly by:
1) Know your own frames - we need to know how we have simplified our problems
2) Know the frames of others - if we know others frame problems, we can tailor our communication to
them.
3) Open minded Framing - when we approach a new issue, try to remain open minded about the frame.
Two decision traps common to most of us is Overconfidence in our judgment and Shortsighted shortcuts. These dangers can cause problems throughout the decision making process, but they particularly affect the gathering of information and intelligence. Wise decision makers avoid them and work to assure high quality intelligence. Many people suffer from overconfidence in what they believe even if their belief entails a negative view of their own worth and abilities. To address this, the authors indicated that we should sizing up what we know - That is, collecting information and using it systematically will reduce the dangers from overconfidence, availability bias, and anchoring.
The authors also indicated that overconfidence is related to another problem called Confirm bias, where people's fondness for evidence that will confirm, rather than challenge, their current beliefs. Avoiding overconfidence means developing good secondary knowledge where primary knowledge consist of facts and principles we believe are true. In additional to overconfidence, we must also watch out for decisions making shortcuts. Misleading shortcuts give people false intelligence, and can derail the entire decision process.
Shooting from the hip barrier is when we rely on institution to make a decision, our mind processes part or all of the information you possesses automatically, quickly and without awareness of any details. But it seldom takes proper account of all the information available. The authors believes that initiative decisions are affected not only by the evidence that should affect our choice, but also by factors such as fatigue, boredom, distractions and recollection of a fight with your spouse at breakfast. But on other hand, initiative decisions making does have at least one advantage. It takes less time than making a decision with the systematic methods. However, the disadvantages of intuitive decisions making are more profound than most use realize. People who make decision intuitively achieve much less consistency than they generally suspect.
The authors indicated that to maximize our chances of making the best choice if we find a systematic way to evaluate all evidence favorable to each possible choice, compare the strength of evidence on each side rigorously, then pick the choice that your system indicates the evidence favors. Here, decision theorists call this kind of choice system a subjective linear model. It is subjective because the importance assigned to each pro and con from human being's head, not from direct calculations based on the real world.
Group Failure barrier, here groups of smart, well-motivated people are mismanaged. Members agree prematurely on the wrong solution. Then they give each other feedback that makes the group as a whole feel certain that it is making the right choice. Members discourage each other from looking at the flaws in their thought process. The groups may become polarized, with members shifting unreasonably to more extreme position or clinging to opposite sides of an issue. Therefore, progresses toward a rational decision become impossible. Through researches, the authors believe that groups can make better decisions than individuals, but only if they are helped along by a skillful leader. There is little excuse for using costly group meetings to make inferior decisions.
The authors indicated that to make better group decisions we should do as following:
1) Intelligent, well-motivated people make superior decisions in groups only if they are managed with skill.
2) The heart of good group management is encouraging the right kind of conflict within the group, and resolving it fully and fairly through further debate and intelligence gathering.
3) Leaders must decide where in the four elements of a decision (framing, intelligent-gathering, coming to conclusions and learning from past cases) the group can make its greatest contributions.
4) Leader should rarely state their own opinions early in group's deliberations, because many group
members will fear to offer their own ideas if they contradict the leader's.
5) Generally, leaders should encourage disagreement in early stages of any group process. Then as
more facts and insights are gained, the leaders should guide the group toward convergence on a
final choice.
6) If a decision process really deadlocks, you can often narrow the gap by separating factual issues from value issues.
The authors indicated that we fall into decision trap number 8, Fooling yourself About feedback, because our natural biases make learning much more difficult than we realize. When events come out well, we tend to see the success as a result of our own genius. But when events turn out badly, we rationalize an explanation that preserves our positive self-image. In addition to these biases produced by our desires, we suffer from hindsight effects caused largely by the way our minds work.
Therefore, attempting to understand our biases, and can interpret feedback realistically, we can consistently turn our experiences into reliable knowledge. The authors also indicated that learning from experience is not automatic. Experience, after all, provides only data, not knowledge. It offers the raw ingredients for learning and we can turn it into knowledge only when they know how to evaluate the data for what they really say. They suggested that people often do not learn as easily from experience as you might expect, even intelligent, highly motivated people.
The authors indicated that most people's experience is afflicted with decision trap number 9 - Not keeping track by:
1) Missing feedback - lack of information on the key question
2) Entwined feedback - evidence is effected by actions taken by the decision maker and associates after making the initial judgment, these factors are called treatment effects
3) Confuse feedback - uncontrollable, unpredictable factors, "random noise" that affect decision
outcomes;
4) Ignore feedback - incomplete use of information on outcomes they already possess
Learning from experience is especially difficult when you face an uncooperative environment like missing feedback or ambiguity due to random noise or treatment effects. To improve with experience, therefore, we need to:
1) Regularly analyze what you are learned recently and how you could be learn more
2) Conduct experiments to obtain feedback you could get in no other way and
3) Learn not just from the outcomes of past decisions but also by studying the processes that produced them.
The 10 decision trap is Failure to audit your decision process. Here, we should analyze your own decisions making and identify a few key steps we ought to take to improve our decisions. Once we are able to locate the few crucial errors, we will find that our decision making can be improved much easily. Often than not, the authors indicated that this is the most neglected r misunderstood barrier of the ten decision traps.