Popular Demand

Tags

AI, decisions, future, jobs, laws, populism, technology

Today world is full of populist pseudo-leaders using rhetoric people like to hear but offering no real solutions to problems. It is so easy to promise to build a wall, so easy to close borders. It is more difficult to fix the underlying causes of immigration. Politics became a game of thrones – who will get the seat to gain power, wealth, name in history. Reality though does not care, wheel of time moves unaffected by all this noise. There are issues out there not one of the leaders is even mentally ready to fix. World today changes because of technology and capitalism. Income gap is a reality pushing people for change, without really knowing what change they really want. They want different reality. But hey, it will not come by itself.

What needs to be done is not easy, involves tough choices and consequence. A lot of thinking and preparation. Technology threatens to remove a lot of jobs: driver-less cars will kill Uber, taxis, truck drivers and with it all mail or milk or post deliveries. This in itself represents great number of people. Robots replace manual labour. AI removes secretaries or assistants. Capitalism means producing goods cheaper and cheaper to beat competition, but that in assumption that someone is still out there to be able to buy those goods. If technology will remove jobs, who will buy those goods produced at near zero costs? Many of us will get by, but will have not enough to retire in comfort. We are, as humanity, getting older. Who will support us?

This is not to say that capitalism is bad. It drives a lot of inventions, if not all. But we need to come up with an idea how to share that additional value made without being communist about it. We need to divide income in a better way, without giving it away. We need to tackle those issues first. World is so interconnected today, that it moves like water. Rich economies attract poorer ones, as in nature trying to reach balance. We can either leave it to chaos, or try to control it using some measures. It is clear that some will gain without giving, but many more will gain and give, loosing at the same time reasons to emigrate. I don’t know what will work, simple giving money away may not be a solution. But this is what leaders should think about. The rest is just a circus and sometimes we laugh until we cry.

Decisions, Decisions…

Tags

behavioral economics, Chip and Dan Heath, choices in life, correct decisions, decision making, decisions, Decisive, hidden consequences, life, mistakes

Behavioral economics take real humans as they are and scientifically proves over and over again that we do not make correct decisions, although logic says that we should, when one coldly deliberates a particular situation after the fact. We have our biases, emotions, we see things too narrowly, we are tired, we go with our gut feeling or we follow some self-appointed gurus, believing in their expertise when in reality there is none.

The science makes us aware of those faults, and tells us how to overcome them. Recent book by Chip and Dan Heath, “Decisive”, offers a WRAP framework (Widen your options; Reality-test your assumptions; Attain distance before deciding; Prepare to be wrong) to help us make better choices in life. Science wants us to think more, deliberate more, consider more. But there must be a line somewhere.

Every choice we make is not perfect and cannot be by design. Maybe I will now step into philosophical argument, but there is no pure right and wrong, black and white, in our lives. If there would be, the path through it would be very easy and possibly boring. I personally think that the gist of life lies in its randomness and constantly fluctuating options and challenges. Simple decisions can have grave but hidden consequences, difficult ones tend to display those consequences very clearly (but still you will never be sure if you can see all of them). If you don’t drink your morning coffee and rush to work instead, you may get involved (god forbid) in a car accident on the way. If you exercise, you may injure yourself. Saving money may lead to dull current life. Bombing Syria means action on international level which seems to be justified in terms of current events, but it brings at the same time suffering to the same people who are to be saved. Each decision, if analyzed too long, will show negative sides (Prepare to be wrong…). But does it mean that we should take more time before we decide on something? And if yes, how much longer is good enough?

If we take our time with every decision, we will get stuck in a void of non-action. I think that we should train ourselves to overcome our own biases, becoming more objective in decision making, but that should not stop us from trusting our feelings. Simple coffee/no coffee decisions should be made as they are made now, unless you are allergic to coffee and may die from its intake.  But decisions regarding your finances, family, and people in general, should take more time or at least you should train yourself to involve more brain in the decision process. If we will consciously realize that we may be wrong or that we could miss some important consequences, we may make a few better decisions. Not perfect, but better. And that will surely help.

Thinking usually does 🙂

Two Systems, Part Two

Tags

biases, Chip and Dan Heath, Daniel Kahneman, decision making process, decisions, Decisive, system

In my post here I have mentioned (by the way, great) book by Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”. I am reaching the end of it and I am starting to see that what I thought that were my rational decisions have a great chance of being biased gut feeling choices, which had (and possibly still have) very little to do with deliberation and conscious choice.

I am saddened by this and I am a little mad. I don’t wat to be governed by my uncontrolled feelings, I want to have more to say about my choices. I mean, I want to be able to control them better, to give them conscious base stemming from thought and free myself from biases, as much as I possibly can.

Kahneman’s book lists whole plethora of biases, framing, formulating and other problems which our two systems have to do with. But it does not really offer a clear system or advice of how we can fight them, it only makes us aware of their existence. As Chip and Dan Heath say in their new book (to be found here) being aware of the fact that you have a cold does not cure it. This book, called “Decisive”, will apparently offer such advice. I am looking forward to it, as I really would like to control (or train) my System 1 better.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

Tags

decision making, decision process, decisions, Harvard Business Review, HBR, process, thinking

If you are a busy executive or a middle level manager, you are, first and foremost, a human being (even if you would rather have all your workers think differently). As a consequence, you are susceptible to human weaknesses or simply to all human limitations, despite all years of training. One of those limitations is ability to stay concentrated, to be analytical, logical and fair throughout the working day. All of those are features you need when making decisions – stuff you will most probably be paid for, as long as those decisions prove to be correct, long and short-term.

As mentioned in current (September) issue of Harvard Business Review on page 72 (article by G. Sargut and R. G. McGrath) “most executives think they can take in more information than research suggest they actually can” (see article here) – a limitation which applies to everyone, not only executives. We all think that we are masters of our own lives, that we can juggle all events around us and stay on top of everything. In truth, we have only very limited time during the day to really think through a few decisions or analyse few events, the more complicated, the fewer. After that, we are tired and we resolve to cognitive short-cuts – without consciously realising that we did so. Thinking about thinking requires energy as well, where supply of that energy is limited.

It is therefore important for any one of us to use that energy correctly. Use it only with the most important issues which really require deeper thought. Sounds easy, but how to do it when you are being bombarded by issues which are important to all except you? Workers coming in with their problems, politics, broken coffee machine, your spouse complaining about you not being there… you get the picture. Your private life, your health issues take a big chunk of your “thinking” energy. The next chunk is taken by surprise events as those occur – crisis management or such. The rest remains for what you have planned or for the rest of unplanned issued that day.

I am not discovering anything unknown here. After all, this is the reason why executives have assistants, why organisations have various levels of management or why there are different responsibility areas, or why there are committees (as in more people can have more energy for thought). Many executives though do not like to use assistants as they cannot force themselves to trust them or they cannot accept the simple fact that there are many ways of taking care of various tasks in addition to “my way”. Many executives choose their managers not because they think differently and bring new angle at looking at things (which requires more thinking when considering them), but because they think the same (which eases the burden). Many also treat committees as political arena to show off their force, not as a chance to analyse issue at hand. Multiply that by the fact that today’s managers and executives are most likely responsible for more decision areas due to layoffs and de-layering.

Those are all dangerous signs – if you have such an executive, I will bet you that he/she is sliding in his correct decision factor (good ones divided by bad ones). He makes less and less of good ones, replacing cognitive process with short cuts. We all use them – we use our experience to help us out in those turbulent times in our daily decisions. We mostly buy the same milk, the same cheese, the same wine – not because we like them so much, but because considering any other choices is tiring, especially after a long day at work. The same short cuts or templates are used by executives, this is also the reason why the ones with more experience used to be correct more often.

And here I have finally arrived at my point – short cuts based on past experiences are not enough in today’s environment. The old templates are not worth a damn right now, especially when it comes to corporate decisions (people relations luckily stay pretty much the same). We need to demand from executives to consider and ponder their decisions more, to get deeper in analysis of the consequences of those decisions. They need to act consciously to accept different points of views or opinions of experts.  They need to do it quicker as well, which also means that their time needs to be freed from other, less important tasks. Using old templates in order to make decisions and being at the same time convinced that we are in control got us to where we are now. Staying with that mode of taking care of business will never get us out.