Jan. 7, 2016: These are business articles, but they could still be applied to making decisions outside of work and make decisions in other areas of your life.
"Have a tough decision? Here are three ways you can make it with confidence": I cut out this article in the National Post on Aug. 16, 2011. It was adapted from the Harvard Business Review, Reuters:
When you're facing a high- stakes decision, take the time to test your intuition, says Harvard Business Review. "Even the most decisive manager can face despair when dealing with a high- stakes matter. Next time you're up against a career- making decision, try doing these three things:
Trust and challenge your gut: In some cases, your first instinct may be right, but it's probably not based on rational thought. It's important to question your initial reaction and test it once you've gathered more data.
Check your bias: Self-interest can be subconscious. Recognize when you may be partial and ask a trusted peer to double-check your decision for any prejudice.
Involve others: Big decisions shouldn't happen in a vacuum. Consult with others to gather differing opinions. This will help you make a more informed choice and give you a better shot at winning buyin.
"Four steps to making better decisions": I cut out this article by Harvey Schachter in the Globe and Mail on Mar. 27, 2013:
Decisive
By Chip Heath and Dan Heath
(Crown Business, 316 pages, $29.95)
You may have heard about the increasing number of organizations experimenting with doing a “premortem” – imagining that the decision the managers are about to take will turn into a fiasco and that, later, they will have to dissect the reasons for the dismal outcome.
Such an exercise illuminates issues you might be ignoring or missing in your excitement with the prospective course of action. But a premortem is basically a negative outlook, only part of the picture.
So in their new book, Decisive, Chip Heath and Dan Heath ask you to imagine instead a “preparade” – a celebration of the fabulous success arising from your decision.
One challenge of preparing for success is ensuring you don’t face disastrous complications when you try to keep pace with your success. Minnetonka Corp., the maker of Softsoap, for example, was well-prepared for the blockbuster success of that product because the company had assured plentiful access to supplies of dispensers for the liquid soap.
Chip Heath is a professor of business at Stanford University and his brother, Dan, is a senior fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. The two collaborated previously on two excellent books, Made to Stick and Switch. They have an ability to take the latest research, weave it together with entrancing stories, and present a simple framework to help you in your work.
They manage that again here, with some excellent tips for improving your decisions, and a neat four-stage conceptual formula:
1. Widen your options
A big problem in making decisions is “narrow framing,” leaping on the first decent idea that surfaces or viewing a problem in simple binary terms – yes or no. The authors point to a study by business professor Paul Nutt who, after analyzing 168 corporate decisions, found that in only 29 per cent of the cases was more than one option considered.
That tracked closely with a study by Carnegie Mellon professor Baruch Fischhoff, who found that, among teenagers, 30 per cent of the time the decision made (to go to a party, to break up with a boyfriend) was a simple yes-or-no, rather than considering other options. “Most organizations seem to be using the same decision process as hormone-crazed teenager,” the brothers say.
One antidote is to assume that none of your options would work and then, when those vanish, see what you can come up with. Also, set up several teams to consider several options at once.
2. Reality-test your options
A second villain of decision-making is the tendency to simply confirm your biases with your analysis, using self-serving information. To combat this, you must get outside your head and collect information you can trust. Here the brothers share a technique favoured by Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management: For each option, consider what would have to be true for it to be the right choice. This clarifies thinking, and separates people from their biases as they analyze factors more carefully.
3. Get some distance before you decide
A third factor in bad decision-making is when emotions lead us astray. The solution is to try to distance yourself from the decision. For example, the authors suggest that when you’re struggling with several appealing options, ask yourself what you would tell your best friend to do in the situation. The options will be the same, but your perspective may change dramatically.
The authors also share a technique from business writer Suzy Welch, dubbed 10/10/10: Consider how you might feel about the decision you are intending to take 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now, and 10 years from now.
4. Prepare to be wrong
Often we’re overconfident about how things will unfold, so we need to stretch our sense of what the future might bring. One recommendation is to “bookmark the future,” as an investment analyst does by imagining the best and worst possible outcomes from a monetary choice. The premortem and preparade are also useful strategies to prepare for an uncertain future.
Books about decision-making are common these days. But the Heath brothers have a winner with their outline of the four villains of decision-making and their many practical solutions, informed not only by behavioural economics studies but also examples of successful and unsuccessful decision makers.
POSTSCRIPT
Howell Malham Jr., co-founder of Insight Labs, which brings some of the world’s smartest people out of boardrooms to tackle the world’s toughest problems, provides an irreverent, illustrated guide to strategy in I Have a Strategy (No You Don’t) (Jossey Bass, 215 pages, $27.95).
If you’re daunted by the feeling you aren’t visionary enough to be a successful entrepreneur, consultants Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits share some techniques about customer insight and rapid experimentation in The Lean Entrepreneur (John Wiley, 256 pages, $37.95).
In The Bankers’ New Clothes (Princeton University Press, 398 pages, $30.50) Anat Admati, a professor at Stanford University, and Martin Hellwig, the first chairman of the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board on banking, look at what’s wrong with banking and what to do about it.
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Four steps to making better decisions
Evaluate all aspects of the options being weighed: Imagine not only possible fiascos, but also potential successes
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Jun. 1, 2016 Amy Cuddy: I found this article on Yahoo:
Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy is perhaps best known as the creator of the "power pose."
As she described in her 2012 TED Talk, power-posing is about taking advantage of the body-mind connection: You adopt the body language of powerful people so that you feel and act more confident.
But power posing is just one path to a state of calm self-confidence that will help you succeed in challenging situations. That state, which Cuddy calls "presence," is the subject of her new book by the same name.
Cuddy defines presence as being attuned to and able to express your full potential. When you're present, you approach challenges without a sense of threat.
Whether you're interviewing for a job or pitching your startup, people can tell right away if you're present, and they judge you more positively when you are.
In an interview with Business Insider, Cuddy said there are three things people see when you're present:
1. You believe your story
When you're present, you demonstrate conviction and passion so that other people come to believe your story, too.
In the book, Cuddy describes a yet-unpublished study she conducted, in which participants went through mock interviews. For five minutes, they had to persuade the interviewer that they were the best person for the job, while being completely honest. All the while, the interviewer held a completely neutral expression.
Three independent pairs of judges watched videos of the interviews, looking for presence, believability, and hireability. Sure enough, the interviewees who were rated more present were also rated more believable and more hireable.
Cuddy writes: "Presence mattered to the judges because it signaled authenticity, believability, and genuineness; it told the judges that they could trust the person, that what they were observing was real."
2. You're confident without being arrogant
In the book, Cuddy quotes a venture capitalist describing what turns him off during an entrepreneur's pitch: "They're too high energy and aggressive, maybe a little pushy. It seems defensive, I don't expect them to have all the answers. Actually, I don't want them to have all the answers."
Being open to feedback is key, Cuddy told Business Insider. The more you shut down other people and their perspectives, the less appealing you become. That's because it can seem like you're trying to cover up a sense of uncertainty.
"A truly confident person does not require arrogance, which is nothing more than a smoke screen for insecurity," Cuddy writes. "A confident person can be present to others, hear their perspectives, and integrate those views in ways that create value for everyone."
3. Your verbal and nonverbal communication is in sync
When we're being inauthentic — or when we're intentionally deceiving someone — Cuddy said our verbal and nonverbal communication is incongruent.
In the book, she explains that's because you're constantly trying to adjust what you're saying and doing to create the impression you think others want to see.
On the other hand, when we're present, our verbal and nonverbal behavior matches. People aren't distracted trying to figure out why something feels "off," and they're more likely to put their trust in you.
Ultimately, if you're confident in yourself, other people will be more likely to be confident in you, too. It doesn't necessarily mean you'll get the job or the investor's money, but you'll walk away knowing that you did the best you could — and the right opportunity for you is out there.
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