Rowan's Future of Choice

Bliss point

More and more, we are realizing the value of diversity. Not just ethnic, gender, or age diversity-- but diversity of thought and perspective. This is what I believe Malcolm Galdwell means by cognitive diversity.

"We discovered that assembling a successful team depends on choosing the right balance of diversity and cohesion -- achieving the bliss point intersection of the two." 
-- Sociologist Brian Uzzi, associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management.

A bliss point is an economics term. Updated Link
Diversity defined.
Fast Company article on Gladwell
Quote source: Northwestern University Science Daily. Link.

Brand advantage

Familiar brands are essentially pre-made decisions. When procurement officials consider what to buy, familiar brands get a break over ones they have never heard of. At least part of a decision maker's filtering process is based on brand recognition, not on actual capabilities, quality, or cost. It would seem to me that internet based tools, such as viral marketing and blogs could help lesser known brands get into the decision process earlier on. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget  is trying to help, but I suspect procurement officials will quickly find workarounds.

What do you think?

On April 11, David Safavian, chief of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and Karen Evans, chief of e-government initiatives, sent a memo to federal executives "requesting that agencies take steps to mitigate brand name usage." Instead, they said, agencies should describe what they need without naming names.

More about this in the Government Executive magazine.

Good company name

Good Decision International Ltd.  is a manufacturer headquartered in Hong Kong.
"We export China-made sports bags, traveling bags, portfolios, luggage, stationery items and more." Link

Sleep on it

"Thinking without action is a daydream. Action without thinking is a nightmare."
-- Japanese proverb

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."
-- Shakespeare's Hamlet

Persians under the influence

In The Histories, written in 450 B.C., Herodotus makes the following statement:

"If an important decision is to be made [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk and the following day the master of the house...submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk."

Source: Dr. Hossein Arsham's web site

Presidential impairment

     "I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes."
   -- Richard Nixon, Former US President

"I believe in open government"

The current U.S. administration says it wants citizen involvement in decision-making. At the same time, the government is withholding more and more information from the public.

Mr. Bush said yesterday, "You're entitled to how I make decisions and you're entitled to ask questions, which I answer."

and...

"Information which used to be easy to obtain is now difficult or impossible to get," he said. Trivial things such as the Pentagon phone directory have been marked for official use only and are no longer public."   

Claiming national security concerns, the Bush administration clamped down on declassification of government documents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The trend toward keeping more government information secret began even before that and those who advocate for openness in government are worried that the freedom of U.S. citizens is eroding with every file they are not allowed to read."

Read the full AP story at the ABC News web site.

Smart heuristics by Gerd Gigerenzer

The really interesting part of this professor's theory is that the way information is represented is key to our ability to understand it.

"...the study of smart heuristics shows that there are strategies people actually use to make good decisions that deal openly with uncertainties, rather than denying their existence."

Gerd Gigerenzer's article can be found here.

Let's work as a team

Facinating research on the effects of cognitive diversity on team decision making. Check it out.

"...research by Deborah Gruenfeld of Stanford's Graduate School of  Business suggests that teams encompassing at least two separate points of view on a particular question make better decisions because the pressure of the minority forces the majority to think more complexly and consider diverse evidence. Gruenfeld gained some of her evidence by analyzing decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court."

Article at Stanford's Graduate School of Business website is here.

Decide how to decide

Here is a great resource for learning more about executive decision making from the practical and academic perspectives. Check it out.

"Before we start the process of making a major decision, there'’s something we do, whether implicitly or explicitly: Make a decision about how to make the decision. At its most fundamental, this decision decision means choosing between winging it and using a structured decision making procedure. If we opt for the latter, we will then face the second decision decision: Precisely how should we structure the decision making process – both to avoid disasters and to discover winning choices?"

The author, Max More, is Director of Content Solutions at ManyWorlds Inc. and a well-known futurist. Launch the PDF with the full article.