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| Volume 4, Issue 5 - May, 2005 •To Blink or not to Blink Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point, has gone to the Best Seller list once more with his new book Blink. I don’t want to take anything away from Malcolm because he is a proven best selling author, but how does it happen that a book about decision-making rises to the status of best seller when there are dozens of other books on the subject that never seem to get much past the list of required reading for students? Maybe a part of the reason for the success of this book can be found in an October 2004 report from Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation. That report proclaims that, “Business decision-making is in crisis. The overwhelming majority of respondents, more than 70 percent, say that poor decision-making is a serious problem for business. The top casualties of poor decision-making are profits, company reputation, long-term growth, employee morale, productivity and revenue.” A decision-making book that didn’t make the Best Seller List is Why Decisions Fail, by Paul C. Nutt. In his book, Nutt explains the magnitude of the problem when he writes, “decisions fail half of the time.” If “decisions fail half of the time,” negatively affecting profits, growth, morale, productivity and revenues, the evidence would seem to indicate that interest in Decision- Making may be reaching the Tipping Point where it will become the hot new topic in business. Just think about the competitive advantage an organization could gain if they could improve their success rate to even 75% while their competition was still at 50%. There is also growing evidence that making decisions is becoming even more difficult. J. Edward Russo and Paul J. H. Schoemaker in their book Winning Decisions, point out that we are inundated with information, facing rapid change and rising uncertainty. We have few historical precedents, more frequent decisions, more important decisions, conflicting goals, more opportunities for miscommunication, fewer opportunities to correct mistakes and higher stakes. All this is contributing to even more difficult decision-making. It would appear that our existing methods for making decisions are inadequate in today’s fast paced, techno enhanced, highly competitive world and the time is right for a new approach that facilitates better decisions…faster. The question facing us then is, To Blink or not to Blink, that is the question. Does Gladwell have a better solution? In Blink, Gladwell mixes scientific research with idealism to suggest that intuition is often superior to reasoned thinking. Richard A. Posner, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, suggests that there are two types of thinking. One is intuition or hunches, snap judgments, emotional reactions, and first impressions--in short, instant responses to sensations. The second type of thinking is reasoned or articulate and is the domain of logic, deliberation, reasoned discussion, and scientific method. Reasoned or articulate thinking is the model of rationality, while intuitive thinking is often seen as primitive. There are numerous examples in Blink of what, on the surface, might appear to be intuitive thinking. Posner on the other hand suggests that there are many instances when the answer appears in a flash like intuition, but are in fact the result of deliberative processes that have become unconscious simply by becoming habitual. Gladwell and Posner agree that we are drowning in information. They also agree on unconscious cognition regardless of whether from intuition or experience and habit. Most importantly, they have both created more awareness of the real problem – the need for an approach to decision-making with improved results. •Website Update The last few months have been incredible for me. I have enjoyed great clients, had a ball preparing for and giving my “Right Choice … at the Right Time” program for the International Facility Managers Association Management Summit in Orlando and revising the Cannon Advantage website. At the time of writing this newsletter, we just had positive feedback from consultant Sue James in Australia that the Momentum Model is working for her. “I found your findings to be totally in keeping with their situation ... which attests to the fact this can be an excellent and very helpful tool for businesses! :-)” Awesome! If you haven’t been to www.cannonadvantage.com in a while, I would invite you to revisit and see the tremendous strides made in further refining the site and making it more user friendly with our audio/video introduction, updated Speaking pages, Case Studies, Quiz, Search capabilities on newsletter topics, Search capabilities on Case Studies and much more. We have also incorporated RSS technology for those of you who might be interested. The Cannon Advantage website is a constant work-in-process. If you have any thoughts or suggestions about what we might do to make it more useful to you, I would really love to hear from you. •Upcoming Schedule May 17th and 18th will find me at the Hardware Show in Las Vegas. This will be the second year for the Vegas show and it should be interesting to see the differences from last year to this. If you will be at the show and would like to get together, please send me an email before the show and we can arrange a time and swap cell phone numbers. •Executive Search If you have ever visited the Resource page on the website, you will notice
that there are only three links to other sites. The reason for this
is that I want my readers to understand that I value their time
and interest and will only provide links to resources that I believe
will be of benefit to them. This month I wanted to point out the
link www.wolfgugler.com.
Wolf runs an Executive Search firm that serves the U. S. and Canadian
markets. He follows the Hardware Market very closely and also provides
assessment services to help evaluate prospective candidates. Wolf
has also recently started his own newsletter. If this is of interest,
I would recommend a visit to his site and a subscription to his
newsletter. If you have a subject that you would like to see covered in future issues of “Taking Aim,” please send me an email at aim@CannonAdvantage.com.
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Robert E. Cannon "Best Practice" Sales Force
Development Change Management Customer Service Assessment for ISO Requirements Smart Thoughts from Smart People – "Everyone's got it in him, if he'll only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities. There's no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us." Charles M. Schwab
"Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate achievements." Napoleon Hill
“Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone." Thomas Carlyle
"You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true." Richard Bach
Taking Aim © 2005 Bob Cannon, The Cannon Advantage Newsletter. All Rights Reserved. The Cannon Advantage visual branding by Zarney Creative. For contact information, click “Resources.” |
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