Decisive Quick-Witted Re-framing

Monkey leaps on a croc posing as a stone in the river

VANARINDA-JATAKA

"Whoso, O monkey-king, like you, combines
Truth, foresight, fixed resolve, and fearlessness,
Shall see his routed foemen turn and flee."

Reference

The Jataka, Volume I, tr. by Robert Chalmers, [1895], at sacred-texts.com
THE JATAKA OR STORIES OF THE BUDDHA'S FORMER BIRTHS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE PALI BY VARIOUS HANDS
UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF PROFESSOR E. B. COWELL.

Data-Driven Decision-Making

Great By Choice by Jim Collins is a terrific book. Wonderful, timely, and very readable and accessible!

It is also very entertaining for the numerous anecdotes in it.

The idea I find the most useful for me is being "empirical." By that, the author apparently means that your decision must have data to back it up, that you must have proof, reason other than and outside of your feelings, hunches, gut feels etc for any decision you make.

He points out that great leaders can afford to be bold and to take frightfully big risks because they base their decisions on their own personal observations, not on second-hand research or heresy etc. e.g. (My examples) Steve Jobs's decision to run their own Apple stores, and (again) his decisions to enter the lacklustre tablet market with iPad. If you want to be bold, daring, decisive (and at the same time, responsible and not suicidal,) you need solid proofs, concrete data, undeniable facts, repeatable experimental results etc.

Does it mean Data-Driven Decision-making?

The author doesn't say much about this. But I would like to point out that whatever data, whatever amount and type of data, in itself, won't give you a decision. Data in whatever form or amount will not decide for you. Given the same data, two different committees can reach two diametrically opposite decisions.

If certain data does give you a decision, then you are not making a decision, but following an order, a recommendation, or some other person's decision.

Easy Decision, Part 2

I will call this technique the "ratchet." And I got it from I'll Show Them Who's Boss.

One online definition of the word goes as "mechanical device consisting of a toothed wheel or rack engaged with a pawl that permits it to move in only one direction." More here.

The method goes like:

1. What are the issues involved in your problem?
2. Deal with the bigger issues first. Only after you have finished with a main issue, you go down to the next/lower level issue.
3. And you mustn't come back up to the main issue over and over.

Easy Decisions, Part 1

James Kilts has discussed in Doing What Matters what he calls the "Quick Screen" method. I am summarizing his tips from my memory.

You can take action under the following circumstances without much further deliberation.

1. The status quo is crippling you. The situation is deteriorating too fast too soon.


2. Your research and discussion are going in a circle, or have reached a dead end.


3. You are acting in accordance with a basic principle. e.g. Satisfying your customers, promoting your brand, and like actions that can never go wrong. Something basic and fundamental.

Another way (James Kilts') to speed up decision making is to accept any proposed decision and then think about whether the resultant future scenario is possible or not, and whether you can like it or not. As an example, he discussed his decision not to disinvest parts of his Gillette company. Some consultants had advised him to sell parts of his company. He wondered what would happen, what would need to happen to accept this idea, like this, in my paraphrase:

To sell this, there must be buyers for this. Since there are no buyers, this won't work. 



To sell that, there must be buyers for that. Yes, there are some buyers. But, since they won't offer prices acceptable to us, this won't work. 

And so on.

This is reminiscent of what President Lincoln did to a newspaper editor. The editor wanted the North to offer peace to the South. Lincoln knew that peace was not palatable to the South. The editor pressed on so hard so long that Lincoln finally decided to agree, and asked the editor to lead a peace delegation to the South. The mission failed as Lincoln expected, and the editor accused him of playing a cruel joke on him.

How To Make Decisions Quickly - Part 2

Direct, straight into the heart of the matter!

1. By Joseph S. Nye
   "But deciding how to decide is as important as making the final decision. What should be the composition of the group the leader turns to? What is the context of the decision? How will information be communicated and how much control does the leader maintain over the decision? A leader who gets any of these factors wrong may be decisive, but also decisively wrong." 
   
   
2. It's Possible to Be Quick
   
   "It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are." -Roy Disney
   
   Know Your Desired Result
   
   Steve Yates said again in the Fortune Magazine interview, “Successful traders don't spend much time regretting decisions or going back over things. If a decision turned out to be wrong, so what? Move on. So when you have to make a quick decision and you know that there's a good chance it will be wrong--the worst thing you can possibly do is sit there and panic and hope. You have to be decisive--go on and do it.”
   
   Soccer/football strikers are trained that way too. 
   
   
3. Gut and Body
   
   1: Trust Your Gut
   
   2: Use Your Body’s Energy Field 
   
   
4. Traps To Avoid
   
   Analysis paralysis
   
   Getting Overwhelmed br Fear of change br Fear of commitment
   
     Fear of regret
   
   Decision-making fatigue
   
   Procrastination 
   
   
5. Colin Powell
   
   " Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut. Don't wait until you have enough facts to be 100% sure, because by then it is almost always too late.... " 
   
   
6. Andrew Carnegie's Master Minds?
   
   What decision would your hero make in these circumstances? Is there a consensus among your heroes on what to do? 
   
   
7. Set a Deadline
   
   An easy way to solve this problem is to put a time limit or deadline on your decisions. 
   
   
8. US Marine Corps
   
     Our leaders must be able to "feel" the battlefield tempo, discern patterns among the chaos, and make decisions in seconds ... much like a Wall Street investment trader, but with life threatening consequences.
   
   ... two primary models for human decision making -- the analytical model and the intuitive, or recognitional, model.
   
   ... While analytical decision making is based on a comparison of quantitative options, recognitional decision making depends on a qualitative assessment of the situation based on the decider’s judgement and experience. It does not look for the ideal solution; instead, it seeks the first solution that will work. Research by noted psychologist Dr. Gary Klein indicates that most people use the recognitional, or intuitive, model of decision making over 90 percent of the time...
   
   ... the longer the decision is delayed, the more opportunities are missed. Initiative can be forfeited to the enemy. ....
   
     .... Napoleon may be correct if he meant that intuition cannot be taught in the traditional sense, but both the Germans and the Japanese were successful in assuming that -- through repetition -- it could be learned. ....
   
   Advances in information technology will never clear Clausewitz’s "fog of war" to the point where the analytical model is timely enough to guarantee victory. br Foundation blocks: character, experience
   
       
   
   
   
   
9. What does US Navy Have to Say?
   
   " analytical or intuitive ... ... ... which is better depends on the nature of the situation, particularly on the time and information available.
   

Book Review "How We Decide"

The late Peter Drucker spent a large chunk of his book "Effective Executive" to discuss how to make good decisions in a corporate setting.

Behavioral economists, military historians, psychonomists, former heavy weight champions(Ali and Foreman in particular), CEO's, marketers, PR gurus, software project managers, physicians/surgeons, F15 pilots, tank commanders and so on, are also keenly interested in decision-making.

Now, let's review the book : How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer 2009.

Length : About 260 pages. Excluding content, introduction, preface, index etc.

My Summary:

1. Use Reason for Simple & New Problem ---> Then , use Intuition: take time, sleep on the problem.
2. Automate skills for individual/constituent steps ---> Then, focus on 'holistic cues' i.e. overall effect/result.
3. Encourage debate and cognitive dissonance.
4. Be mindful of what you don't know.

The smaller the content in the original, the smaller the summary. Excuse me if I am stating a very obvious fact.

Effectiveness Choices | Moses says "Journey Forth!"

History and Movies are not only for inspiration but also for your mental rehearsals of success. Here I'd like to share a lesson of history from the book, Jewish Wisdom for Business Success.

Frankly, it's not a remarkable book, not worth-reading in details. But there are peaks which you should not miss. I've chosen one such peak to discuss here.

Panic Buttons

Human beings under severe pressure usually limit themselves to only the three options of fight, flee, or freeze. Animals are also known to behave in this way. How can we expand our options at such critical moments of life?

How did Moses do in Exodus?

Our book describes a scene in which the Israelis were caught between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army. The Israelis had been running away from the Pharaoh and now the king's army was coming to re-capture and enslave them again. All around there was desert and the Red Sea was blocking their escape.

The Israelis came up with four different options.
(1) Kill themselves, which the authors classify as self-destruction.
(2) Fight the pursuing army to death, which the authors say was unlikely to succeed.
(3) Surrender to the army.
(4) Pray to God, which the authors classify as "learned helplessness."

Mose's decision was "Journey Forth!"

A Ninja warrior, a Maoist guerrilla would have applauded this choice. It echoes what the Law of Attraction cult would advise "Don't solve the problem, just go after what you want."

"Remain silent," Don't pray to God now

The authors point out that it was very unusual of a prophet like Moses to ask his people not to pray. They interpret this as Mose's injunction to his followers to jerk themselves free from learned helplessness, and to take responsibility for their own destiny.

I have a different interpretation: True believers do not put their god to a test, a dilemma in this way. They take responsibility for their own actions. They don't punish themselves or choose deliberately to suffer in any way in the name of a God.

Conclusion

Don't just pray. Journey forth.