Decisions

the importance of decision making

I sat on a log in a flat part of the trail near a junction. I was 35 miles into a planned 70+ mile hike. I had a decision to make, and enough data to make the decision. The challenge, as always with decision making is how much to rely on data, and how much to rely on your gut.

Leaders Make Decisions

Early in my career, I began to notice a pattern with a few of the leaders I admired. They were all really good at making a confident decision - no matter how much - or how little data they had. If a decision needed to be made, they made it and moved forward. They moved forward, and then - if the data showed that a change in direction was needed after all, they’d adapt.

In Blink, Malcom Gladwell talks about Thin-Slicing and the Adaptive Unconscious. Thin-slicing refers to our ability to use limited information from a very narrow period of experience to come to a conclusion - which allows us to make decisions quickly and often accurately without needing to process a large amount of data. The Ad…