Sunday, August 15, 2021

MYTHS ABOUT DECISION MAKING

 

Prakash Iyer is his outstanding book 'The Habit of Winning' narrates a story:
A while back, few scholars studied 250+ penalty kicks. The intent was to assess the best chances for goalkeepers to stop the penalty. They plotted the movements & figured out that the best chance of saving a penalty was when the goalkeeper simply stays still & do not commit to dive in any direction. So why do goalkeepers still commit to a dive ? If they don't then they would they would have to deal with barrage of criticism/questions like 'he didn't even try', 'why did he stand still'. 

As professionals, we too often think that 'Bias for action' is good for making quality decisions and this may not always be true.

Cheryl Strauss Einhorn in her HBR article '11 Myths about Decision Making' https://bit.ly/2R3hy32 introduces a phrase “Cheetah Pause.”

Cheetah’s prodigious hunting skill is not due to its speed. Rather they habitually run down their prey at speeds approaching 60 mph but are able to cut their speed by 9 mph in a single stride. This allows them to make sharp turns, sideways jumps etc.
She argues:
"In #decisionmaking too, quality thinking benefits from periods of thoughtful deceleration"

What do you think?
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