When management waits until the data is clear, the game is over. But that means management has to take action on a theory rather than evidence. Unfortunately, the word theory gets a bum rap at the Harvard Business School and in business in general because it’s associated with the term theoretical, which connotes impractical. But actually theory is very practical. It says this will happen and this is why; it’s a statement of cause and effect. In our teaching we have so exalted the virtues of data-driven decision making that in many ways we condemn managers only to be able to take action after the data is clear and the game is over. In many ways a good theory is more accurate than data. It allows you to see into the future more clearly.

If we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already past.

There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered seriously looks strange; what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not be considered seriously.

You have a good conceptual tool if you can answer ‘yes’, to the following four questions:
1. Is it portable? Can you use it to generalize across situations?
2. Is it actionable? Does it give you information about what to do?
3. Is it trustworthy? Does it give you what you want more often than not?
4. Is it adaptable? Can you change it as you learn, and use it in original ways?

A committee is a group of men who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done.

Decisions are made well only if based on a clash of conflicting views. The first rule of decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement. It safeguards the decision-maker against becoming a prisoner of the organization (or culture).

In the Information Age, information was a relatively scarce resource that conferred competitive advantages on those who obtained it. In the Knowledge Era, by contrast, information is virtually free. We often feel we’re drowning in the stuff. In theory, the true competitive advantage stems from turning all this information into useful knowledge. It’s a nice theory, as far as it goes. The truth, however, is that even knowledge holds little value until we use it to make decisions. Decision making is the all-important intermediate step between knowledge and action, between strategy and execution.

While the mind looks for proof, the heart looks for engagement. While the mind looks for information, the heart looks for passion. While the mind looks for answers, the heart looks for experience. The mind makes a decision, and it's the heart that makes a commitment.

An expert's job is to be right — to solve the client's problems through the application of technical and professional skill. The advisor behaves differently. Rather than being in the right, the advisor's job is to be helpful, providing guidance, input, and counseling to the client's own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times; the advisor's role is subordinate to this, not that of a prime mover.

Cost-benefit analysis can be an effective tool to analyze simple, one-dimensional problems, such as whether to install dividers on dangerous stretches of highway, where relatively unambiguous data is in abundant supply and there is little controversy. It also is a good way to elucidate the trade-offs for a given policy or regulation, or to produce a summary statistic about its economic efficiency.

But the cost-benefit method loses its authority when it’s used to assess more complex decisions. It is inadequate for evaluations of interventions that will affect many different dimensions, such as markets, economies, health, the environment, and endangered species. Cost-benefit analysis is also inappropriate for products or processes over which there are disagreements about benefits or about which outcomes are important. And it should never be used as the basis for regulation in the presence of scientific uncertainty or value conflicts, or in an area where there are no authorities one can trust to know all the answers. Decisions like these require a more expansive methodology — one that isn’t dependent on the affectation of translating all value into economic terms, that is more transparent and responsive to outside criticism, and that pragmatically represents the interests of everyone involved: industry, government, and the public.

Humans do not make rational, logical decisions based on information input, instead they pattern match with either their own experience, or collective experience expressed as stories. It isn’t even a best fit pattern match, but a first fit pattern match … The human brain is also subject to habituation, things that we do frequently create habitual patterns which both enable rapid decision making, but also entrain behavior in such a manner that we literally do not see things that fail to match the patterns of our expectations.

Organizations are out there every day, making tons of decisions, but they aren’t keeping track of them. There are many factors within organizations that make them reluctant to learn from experience, so it’s a forlorn hope, but the goal would be to have dispassionate evaluations of past decisions, and to spend some effort in figuring out why each decision did or did not pan out. Doing that systematically is key: really try to question the way you make decisions, and improve it. There is very little motivation within organizations to do this, because it threatens people. Executives don’t like to be second guessed, and procedures that are threatening to them are not likely to be adopted. But as a result, organizations are learning much less than they could from their experiences.

The most effective way people can change a story is to view it through any of three new lenses, which are all alternatives to seeing the world from the victim perspective. With the reverse lens, for example, people ask themselves, "What would the other person in this conflict say and in what ways might that be true?" With the long lens they ask, "How will I most likely view this situation in six months?" With the wide lens they ask themselves, "Regardless of the outcome of this issue, how can I grow and learn from it?" Each of these lenses can help people intentionally cultivate more positive emotions.

Lyle's Law of Certitude: The more certain you are that you are correct, the more imperative it is to consider that you might be wrong.

Quick decisions based on wrong assumptions lead to quick trouble. Quick decisions based on a faulty analogy do the same. "Ready, fire, aim" is a prescription for poor marksmanship.

Richard Neustadt asks, "are you facing a problem that can be solved or a condition that must be treated?" Mistaking one or the other can be painful.

Are you using a flawed analogy? Assumptions that are not true? Are you asking "what should I do about this?" before you ask "how should I think about this?" If you are, you get only the solution to the wrongly defined problem.

These are the essentials of critical thinking. And there are a couple more:
* Being extro-spective: seeing the bigger picture beyond the immediate situation
* Looking around the corner: having a sense of what could happen later
* Having the ability to view doing nothing as one of the possible choices

The problem -- and the essence of what makes forecasting hard -- is that human nature is hardwired to abhor uncertainty. We are fascinated by change, but in our effort to avoid uncertainty we either dismiss outliers entirely or attempt to turn them into certainties that they are not.

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I've reached that state am I qualified to speak. This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life.

Darwin paid particular attention to disconfirming evidence. Objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you're going to be a great thinker. There, we're talking about Darwin's special attention to disconfirming evidence and also about checklist routines. Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors. You should have all this elementary wisdom and then you should go through a mental checklist in order to use it. There is no other procedure in the world that will work as well.

Listing all the options for solving a problem benefits decision making in a number of ways beyond merely encouraging proper problem definition. It focuses the decision making process on rigorous analysis and away from ideology, assertion and who can yell the loudest. In the face of a comprehensive list of options, even the most passionate advocate has trouble with the simple question "What is good and bad, right and wrong with each of the options?" Can an advocate sustain credibility in the face of an argument that options should not be dispassionately analyzed? Listing the options is probably the single best step to assuring that proper analysis actually takes place. If you do not list all the options, how can you analyze all the options? Listing the options exposes blind advocacy.

The way we've taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when it's too late. The only way you can look into the future is with theory. And that's a big leap for managers to take.

The key to good theory is good categorization--understanding the circumstances you're in, and the circumstances you're not in.

Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence.

The really tough choices . . . don't center upon right versus wrong. They involve right versus right. They are genuine dilemmas precisely because each side is firmly rooted in one of our basic, core values. Four such dilemmas are so common to our experience that they stand as models, patterns, or paradigms. They are:
- Truth versus loyalty
- Individual versus community
- Short-term versus long-term
- Justice versus mercy

It is astounding how many "dumb" questions, well timed, might have prevented poor decisions.

There is no surer way of putting problems across than to present them in a form as close as possible to that in which they actually occur, and the greater vividness and realism thereby secured will stimulate the ensuing thinking and discussion.