Ask one of your colleagues or a fellow manager or this person trapped inside your body how they make decisions and the answer is usually a considered and sensible one. “I think through all the available information and facts and look at all the alternatives and possibilities then decide”. Oh yeah? Not likely! The reality is that ninety times out of hundred, we make lazy, uninformed and emotional decisions that are based on the way we think about the world and the people around us…
Thinking is hard stuff for most people because a lot of the time we are looping around in our autopilot code – a code that is a function of books we read or didn’t read and the time we spent playing around with TV remote controls. Learning not to think too hard has morphed into a way of being. Thinking has become an unpleasant task that has to be done for a few minutes in the office because we’re paid to think once in a while. Occasionally, we meet someone who tell us this can be good for us. Remember the exhortation by IBM? “Think”.
As it happens, this is the same autopilot code that makes it hard to listen well. Listening requires active attention, turning away from our own thoughts for a bit. That takes energy – lot’s of it – but energy is in short supply these days.
The boss wants a strategy paper by next Tuesday. Well-researched, carefully thought through, of course. So we have two choices – we start thinking right now, analyzing, sifting through lot’s of information. – or we do this the the easy way. The easy way wins, everytime. We take a short-cut and bypass the whole thinking-researching-reflecting-analyzing-deciding process and go to the decision straight way.
How do we achieve this miraculous feat? Well, we use our existing knowledgebase, impressions we have of what the boss may want, some thoughts left over from the last report and aome stuff about a competitor’s strategy that we imagined on the way to the office this morning. Then we fudge the strategy paper to make it look like we got this information through serious analysis.
There’s a guy called Henry Mintzberg who researches this kind of stuff. He’s good – in fact, he’s so good he’s a professor of management at McGill University in Canada. He found in his research of many managers he studied that many decisions are made on the fly without serious thought or reflection. He observed that the vast majority of managers merely scanned their email, skimmed through essential reports and picked up most of their information from informal chats, the odd phone call, gossip and plain hearsay.
They (and we) form impressions and make judgments about colleagues, bosses. clients etc in a superficial manner, based on a person’s voice, manner, dress, age etc.
Do you make decisions like this as well? Sure you do. Guaranteed.
I like the reference you make to the two legs – listening and asking questions. I will make a note to include something about questions and what sort of questions to use in decision making. Do you want to contribute some ideas?
i think you have a point. because although thinking is something unique with us humans, we hardly use it. it has become something like a power of VETO.
i suggest from the very beginning of education process, thinking or creative thinking should be taught as a subject in schools.
there are two things which act as the legs for thinking, listening(not hearing) and questioning(not talking).
i don’t think we do any of them seriously.
nice article!