Talking Helps
Three helpful ideas for involving other people in your decision-making process. Be hard on the problem, not the people. Politics and participation make for bad bedfellows. If you’ve involved others, treat them well, no matter how much you disagree. Put your energy into figuring out the real problem, sorting out choices, determining what’s important, and grappling […]
Beware of Solutions Masquerading as Problems
When the problem and the solution are the same, you don’t have a real decision. There’s a difference between “Should we go to Spain this year?” and “What should we do for a vacation?” The first is a set-up to go to Spain. The second invites consideration of many alternatives. “Should I divorce the bastard?” […]
Experiments Are Failures We Learn From
Experiments are “failures” we learn from. “Failure” is another word for “not what I expected.” Expectations help keep us going. Dopamine levels increase when we expect a positive outcome or reward from an activity. The chemical hit makes us feel energized and focused. But here’s the thing: It’s not the actual achievement of the reward […]
Don’t Be Clickbait
A headline is an advertisement for an article. It makes a promise: New, better, cheaper, faster, Going Fast, fascinating, shocking. The lead (or lede) sets the hook. The best leads put across the key insight or big idea. They communicate both an understanding of what interests the reader as well as what’s important to know. […]
Vote, Voice, Visibility
Every decision needs a Decision Owner. Especially decisions involving multiple stakeholders. The Decision Owner is responsible for deciding and communicating how he or she wants these people involved in the decision process. Here are four possible roles. Vote: These people are involved because their consensus, opinion, and support are required. These people can expect to […]
The Value of Others
Some decisions just involve you. In those cases, you can usually improve the quality of your decision by seeking out different points of view. To challenge your thinking. To provide the information you need. Other decisions involve many people. You can improve the quality of those decisions by making sure of the following: Everyone involved […]
“Facts” vs Uncertainty
We naturally gravitate toward information that is easy to collect, inside our comfort zone or that confirms our biases and preferences. This consumes time and attention but does little to advance the quality of the decision. The most interesting decisions have uncertainties and risks that no amount of fact-gathering will resolve. Uncertainty simply means the […]
The End of the World, Again and Again
Without thinking too hard about it, I can recall thinking that each of the following events, all of which happened during my working life, were something like the end of the world. Black Monday (1987): On October 19, 1987, global stock markets experienced a massive crash, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting 22.6% in […]
Wolfing vs. Tasting
Trader Joe’s sells a very nice 500-gram dark chocolate bar for about $8.00. We break it apart and put the pieces in a jar. It’s super easy to walk by, grab a piece, and wolf it down before I make it to the other side of the room. In the same pantry, we keep single-origin, […]
Carry On
There is a point in every big deal when it looks like it will all fall apart. There is a point in any creative project where you become convinced that the work is crap, and it should be thrown away. There is a point in any writing project where the bank page just won’t stop […]