The Art of Decision Making Mirrors of Imagination, Masks of Fate

Chapter1 The clock that struck thirteen: the challenge of sense making
P11: We see but we do not observe (Sherlock Holmes) P12: In 1985, BCCI’s external auditors, Price Waterhouse (as they were then known), discovered that BCCI had used highly questionable accounting methods in order to disguise losses. P13: Decision science is about making the right choice. Sometimes making sense of a situation is fairly straightforward. It is not always so easy to make correct sense of things, however. We can be good at decision making and yet fail because of deficient sense making. The outcome was a disaster because the projected upsurge in sales never happened. P14: Decision making is about asking clear questions and obtaining clear and definite answers.
The Art of Decision Making: Mirrors of Imagination, Masks of Fate (Written by Helga Drummond) [Copyright ⓒ 2001 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.]
Introduction
P1: The poet Robert Burns warns us that our best – laid schemes frequently go awry. It is hilarious when Laurel and Hardy find themselves embroiled in ‘another fine mess’, rather less so when it happens in real life. Moreover, for all our technical sophistication, we only have to open a newspaper to find yet another ‘fine mess’ – the Millennium Dome that promised so much and ended in ignominy, the BSE saga, the Internet trading companies that fell to earth. Some decision failures are so serious that the world ‘mess’ is inadequate. The patients murdered by their trusted doctor, Harold Shipman, died because potentially ominous evidence was misinterpreted. The victims of the Concorde disaster died because a potentially catastrophic risk went In our personal lives we also sometimes make decisions that ‘gang aft a – gley’. We may find ourselves trapped in a career or a relationship and wonder how we got there. We may do something exactly ‘by the book’ and fail miserably yet succeed brilliantly when we act upon intuition and impulse. P2: Almost all decisions are a gamble. No matter how carefully we research and plan, there is always that things will turn out differently from what we expect. Laptop computers were expected to oust the larger desktop machines – a prediction that has yet to be fulfilled. Although the forecast upsurge in sales of mobile telephones has materialized, the unexpected twist is that expansion has largely favored the ‘pay as you go’ sector. A more important question is what that broken rail signified. P3: Even when we guess the future correctly, the dividing line between success and failure can be slender. P4: Luck plays a part in decision making. Sometimes we are luckier than we deserve to be. P5: What we do know is that if we get it wrong, we have to live with the consequences. History was all about blunders, lost opportunities, and failed gambles. So is decision making. How do decision makers become committed to a course of action without apparently having made a decision? Are decision makers completely at the mercy of chance? Decision fiascos frequently take us by surprise, yet in retrospect were inevitable. If something is unexpected it can not be inevitable. How do we explain that paradox?
All decisions have unintended consequences. Yet sometimes decisions produce the complete opposite of what was intended. How does this happen? P6: When decision makers are confronted by failure they frequently make matters worse by ‘throwing good money after bad’ – why? Our freedom to define reality implies contradictory things. On the one hand, we can escape from reality by retreating ting into fantasy. Conversely, we can change reality by viewing the world from a different viewpoint. P7: Most decisions can be made to look good on paper. The only valid test is the rutted road of reality. P8: Decision science rests upon taking the risk out of uncertainty by pre – emptive planning and forecasting. The art of decision making stresses reflection, imagination and insight. While decision science suggests we can eliminate surprise, the art of decision making involves reflecting upon the ripening of events, assessing what the future may bring, where the weaknesses lie and preparing to be surprised. P9: Decision science depicts the decision maker as analytical, devoid of feeling. Yet just as the feudal barons destroyed castles out of greed, fear and jealousy, are we any different? Our educational sophistication may enable us to hide our darker impulses beneath a veneer of managerial language but they still exist. P10: The most important suggestion is that luck starts with humility. The message is that real derives from being able to sense the limits of one’s power.
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The problem is that in sense – making the waters are invariably muddied. Questions are inevitably vague, answers are inevitably flimsy. Our information is almost invariably equivocal to some extent. Often all we have to go on are small cues, ‘two dead fish’ that may be significant or coincidental. The dilemma is that we can never be sure. On the one hand, we risk overreacting, shutting down a bank every time an instance of fraud is discovered. Yet if we wait for the full picture to emerge, we may discover we have a BCCI on our P18: Expectations may determine what we see and bear. P21: Expectations may not only determine what we see, they also influence what we hear. P22: People often tell us what we want to hear. They sometimes tell us what we expect to hear. We are at our most vulnerable if what they tell us what we want and expect to hear. P24: We rationalize what we see to fit our expectations. Alternatively, having invested time and effort in finding a solution, we may prefer to distort reality rather than abandon the solution. What this means is that once we form a view of a situation we rarely alter it as new evidence emerge. Instead what tends to happen is that we change our information to fit our expectations. P27: Expectations can determine not only what we see and hear, but also how we act. P28: We think by acting. Actions generate information and feedback and so enables us make sense of events. P34: Here was something could not be rationalized. As human beings, we have a taste for power.