#decision-making

#decision-making

For more than a decade, I managed the national advertising program for a large life insurance company. During that time, I had an odd secret desire. I wanted to manage national advertising for a coffee company. Why? Because I had already made up the tagline for my imaginary campaign: "The fuel of business." The corporation I worked for (in real life, not my imagination) had a huge headquarters with an excellent cafeteria, with its main attraction being a vast row of gleaming silver coffee machines.

Leah Anderson, a senior executive at Land O'Lakes, has learned to make high-stakes calls even when the data is incomplete. It's a discipline that's become foundational to her leadership, especially as AI and digital tools accelerate the speed at which farmers and retailers must act. She says the biggest risk for decision-makers in this space isn't making the wrong call-it's getting stuck.

How do you know if, say, marrying your dating partner will lead to long-term happiness? Or whether accepting a demanding new job (with all the added responsibilities and time dedication) will bring lasting fulfillment? These and other major life choices are made based on the belief that you truly know yourself (i.e. your abilities, values, and desires). In other words, they rely on (presumably accurate) self-knowledge.

Most of us have strong opinions about what those words mean, but scratch the surface and it becomes clear that "smart" and "dumb" are slippery, subjective constructs. What seems smart to one person may strike another as naive, arrogant, or shortsighted. Worse still, our own perception of what's smart can shift over time. Yesterday's clever decision can look like today's regrettable blunder.

The Ravens and Bills can offer the Dolphins lessons in the value of being able to win in more than one way, the importance of the trenches, the role of physicality, and the significance of being able to win on the road. The Dolphins' next incarnation should prioritize all of those things in the same fashion that Baltimore and Buffalo have prioritized them. The Dolphins (2-7) must make major changes in strategy and philosophy.

But in today's rapidly shifting environment-where change moves faster than ever-you don't have the luxury of slowly assessing your team and making gradual adjustments. The pace of technology and AI, hybrid work, low employee engagement, evolving strategies, and shifting workforce dynamics demand that you assess your team quickly and confidently. Gone are the days of "observe and wait." You're expected to deliver results fast.

What's the big idea? There is no such thing as a calculator for life's decisions. Try as we might to quantify, count, and calculate in search of the "right" choice, that is simply not how wise decision-making happens. Qualitative judgment and consideration of preferences and values are required when identifying the best option before us. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite-read by Barry-below, or in the Next Big Idea App.

The answer requires what I call wisdom of temporal perspectives in our decision-making. The wisdom of temporal perspectives involves the temporal appraisal of the current situation, where we take into consideration past factors that give rise to the situation and future consequences that may transpire when solving problems and making decisions. It is a form of transformational wisdom that is particularly important in a complex world of challenges today.

Well, the answer does depend on the person and the circumstances of the dates. Dates are, in essence, experimental samples of what the person may be really like. Naturally, the more samples you have, the more accurate picture you'll have. At the same time, each date does come with a cost in time, effort, and faith in humanity. Therefore, you don't necessarily want to be saying,

Erin is a smart cookie. She manages complex projects for a living. She maps dependencies, anticipates risks, and can predict how a small change will ripple through a system. Yet when it comes to her own life, her thinking feels fuzzy and reactive. She's brilliant at analysis, just not when the subject is herself or topics like parenting, communication with her partner, or what type of balance she wants.

I've spent more than two decades working with leaders, entrepreneurs, and teams around the world to help them become more strategic in how they think, act and make decisions. Along the way, I've seen the same frustration crop up over and over again: people know strategy matters but don't know how to "do" it. The good news? Strategy-and being strategic-isn't a mysterious skill reserved for those sitting around the boardroom or graduating from business school.

Believe it or not, emotional reasoning is neither rare nor uncommon. It is present when we feel jealous and conclude that our partner is cheating on us, with no reason or evidence to back this assumption up. It is in play when we feel judged and scrutinized, without a single remark or event as proof. It can negatively impact our impression when meeting a prospective employer triggers anxiety.

It's not just the civilian corporate executives and white-collar workers who are leaning into the generative AI boom at work. Military leaders are diving in too. The top US Army commander in South Korea shared that he is experimenting with generative AI chatbots to sharpen his decision-making, not in the field, but in command and daily work. He said "Chat and I" have become "really close lately."

When faced with a difficult problem - and how to spend money in a way that will improve your life certainly is - it can help to work backward, reducing and excluding what doesn't work until what's left over is a decent approximation of favorable traits. Evolution works in similar ways, so thoroughly destroying what doesn't work that what's left over tends to work quite well.

There was a lot of good, and there was stuff we have to work on, obviously. We did a good enough job to win the game. I thought our third period was our best period. We did a good job protecting the lead and closing it out. The goalie was good. We had some players who were really good tonight. Overall, our puck play wasn't great. That was the root of our problems, in general.

Sometimes waiting for someone to show up or for a situation to develop becomes a waste of time, rather than an exercise in diligence. It's such a fine line to walk. Knowing when to cut bait and when to hang on. What if the promise materializes the moment after you've walked away? Conversely, what if you're left checking your watch and tapping your foot only to realize there's suddenly egg on your face?

Economists have some great tools for doing so, but Thaler got the field to appreciate that human beings, as impressive as we are in many ways, are subject to certain limitations that psychologists know a lot about. Those limitations, such as myopia, sloth and a fear of loss that exceeds the love of gains, have to be taken into account if we're going to truly understand economic decisions.

Thinking forward is an automatic process. Cause, then effect. Input, then output. A to B. It feels logical-and normal to start with a conclusion, then find justification around it.But we can always take our thinking a step further. Sometimes, the best way to get the answers you want is to think backwards. It's called mental inversion. Turn the whole thinking process upside down. As the great algebraist Carl Jacobi said, "Invert, always invert."

October is here like a comforting sip of spiced cider. Every month, I ask my tarot deck, "What do we need to know?" In the weeks ahead, you're learning what empowerment feels like. This five-card spread I created represents... Energy: Your vibe right now. Situation: What's happening around you. Obstacle: A struggle you're facing. Action: What to do about it. Lesson: What you'll learn from this.

Think about the last time you had to make a difficult choice, or had to wait to figure out what to do. For some people, any decision-making process is stressful, can elevate blood pressure, and may cause distress. How do you feel in spaces of uncertainty? Do you tolerate ambiguity well, or do you find the state of unknowing insufferable?

Controversy is baked in - which is why it should come as no surprise that Contrarian Thinking CEO Codie Sanchez made waves for a hot take she shared in a podcast interview. In a clip of the interview, posted by TikTok account @goated.quotes, Sanchez says that she can tell how successful someone is by how they order coffee. "Show me how long it takes you to order at a counter," says the CEO, "and I will show you your bank account."

When your priority becomes moving forward without using more energy, consider dropping one of your criteria for the task. Drop a characteristic you think the solution must have. For example, you might believe you need to give your niece a unique gift each year, when really she would prefer $20 cash and doesn't value uniqueness. Removing the single friction point blocking your progress can ease the emotional weight of the task, often with little or acceptable sacrifice in the outcome.

From something as simple as choosing what to wear for work to as complex as what business strategy to implement to achieve a competitive advantage, making decisions is an integral part of our everyday lives. The human brain is wired in such a way that we make many of these choices subconsciously, without even being aware of it! 🧠 However, not all decisions are (or should be) made subconsciously-sometimes, they result from proper thought, analysis, and planning.

Ladder of inference is a step-by-step process that you naturally follow while making decisions. The seven steps of this decision-making process are observation, data selection, interpretation, assumptions, conclusion, beliefs, and action. The ladder of inference is a metaphorical model of cognition and action designed by an American business theorist, Chris Argyris, in the 1970s. He created it to help people understand the decision-making process and avoid jumping to wrong conclusions. It was later popularized by Peter Senge in his book 'The Fifth Discipline'.

Every day, we make choices, big and small. From what we eat for dinner to our careers to life-altering decisions, we are continually confronted with challenging and even intriguing complex choices. It can be easy just to follow our usual habits, ask friends and colleagues, or search the internet for advice. Sometimes, we sit back and wait for things to happen, hoping they'll sort themselves out.

Some product managers become bottlenecks because they want to control all decisions and information. For others, company culture creates bottlenecks. Regardless, whether it's excessive approvals, fear of failure, or unclear accountabilities, product managers often become the single decision maker for product development. It's a lot of pressure to have team members waiting on you for something and to unblock them in their progress.

That's why it's crucial to remember that FPL is a marathon, not a sprint - and even after the toughest gameweeks, there's always room to bounce back. As someone who loves psychology, I often apply it to my own FPL management. The truth is FPL can impact mental health if it stops being enjoyable or becomes the main outlet for stress.

"If at first you don't succeed, try again." "Winners never quit and quitters never win." Our culture has a lot of sayings against quitting, making it seem like a failure. But sometimes, abandoning a goal means opening up space for something better. Cognitive psychologist Annie Duke, author of Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away; career educator Colin Rocker; and psychologist and professor