Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results
by Shane Parrish
When deciding at work, criteria that are ambiguous or jargon-laden lend themselves to endless debates as to their meaning. We assume that everyone has a shared understanding of what these words and phrases mean. They don’t. We assume that our own definitions won’t change. They might. What a word like “strategic” means to one person is often different from what it means to another. As a result, ambiguous criteria rob decision-makers of their ability to distinguish who’s right from who’s wrong, and force debates about semantics instead of which potential solution is the best. Other If you find yourself struggling to determine specific criteria, it’s a sign either that you don’t really understand the problem, or that you don’t understand the general features that criteria are supposed to have. Those features include the following: Clarity: The criteria should be simple, clear, and free of any jargon. Ideally, you should be able to explain them to a twelve-year-old. Goal promotion: The criteria must favor only those options that achieve the desired goal. Decisiveness: The criteria must favor exactly one option; they can’t result in a tie among several.
The first two components—formulate and communicate—are the responsibility of the senior commander. You must communicate the strategy, the rationale, and the operational limits to the team. Tell them not just what to do, but why to do it, how you arrived at your decision, so they understand the context, as well as the boundaries for effective action—what is completely off the table.
But when it comes to defining problems, we have less experience. Things are often uncertain. We seldom have all the information. Sometimes, there are competing ideas about what the problem is, competing proposals to solve it, and then lots of interpersonal friction. So we’re much less comfortable defining problems than solving them, and the social default uses that discomfort.
All of the extra information made them no more accurate but a lot more confident. Confidence increases faster than accuracy. “The trouble with too much information,” Robinson told me, “is you can’t reason with it.” It only feeds confirmation bias. We ignore additional information that doesn’t agree with our assessment, and gain confidence from additional information that does.
The problem occurs when you zoom in from the aggregate to the individual, from the eons of evolution to the present moment of decision. In today’s world, basic survival is no longer in question. The very tendencies that once served us now often act as an anchor holding us in place, weakening our position, and making things harder than they need to be.
We’ll never be exceptional at anything unless we raise our standards, both of ourselves and of what’s possible. For most of us, that sounds like a lot of work. We gravitate toward being soft and complacent. We’d rather coast. That’s fine. Just realize this: if you do what everyone else does, you can expect the same results that everyone else gets.
"When deciding at work, criteria that are ambiguous or jargon-laden lend themselves to endless debates as to their meaning. We assume that everyone has a shared understanding of what these words and phrases mean. They don’t. We assume that our own definitions won’t change. They might. What a word like “strategic” means to one person is often different from what it means to another. As a result, ambiguous criteria rob decision-makers of their ability to distinguish who’s right from who’s wrong, and force debates about semantics instead of which potential solution is the best. Other"
"If you find yourself struggling to determine specific criteria, it’s a sign either that you don’t really understand the problem, or that you don’t understand the general features that criteria are supposed to have. Those features include the following: Clarity: The criteria should be simple, clear, and free of any jargon. Ideally, you should be able to explain them to a twelve-year-old. Goal promotion: The criteria must favor only those options that achieve the desired goal. Decisiveness: The criteria must favor exactly one option; they can’t result in a tie among several."
"Question 1: What are the variables you’d use to make this decision if you were in my shoes? How do those variables relate to one another? Question 2: What do you know about this problem that I (or other people) don’t? What can you see based on your experience that someone without your experience can’t? What do you know that most people miss? Question 3: What would be your process for deciding if you were in my shoes? How would you go about doing it? (Or: How would you tell your mother/friend to go about doing it?)"
"If you find yourself expending tremendous energy on how you are seen, if you often feel your pride being wounded, if you find yourself reading an article or two on a subject and thinking you’re an expert, if you always try to prove you’re right and have difficulty admitting mistakes, if you have a hard time saying “I don’t know,” or if you’re frequently envious of others or feel as though you’re never given the recognition you deserve—be on guard! Your ego is in charge."
"The social default prompts us to accept the first definition people agree on and move forward. Once someone states a problem, the team shifts into “solution” mode without considering whether the problem has even been correctly defined. This is what happens when you put a bunch of smart, type A people together and tell them to solve a problem. Most of the time, they end up missing the real problem and merely addressing a symptom of it. They react without reasoning."
"The emotion default: we tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts. 2. The ego default: we tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy. 3. The social default: we tend to conform to the norms of our larger social group. 4. The inertia default: we’re habit forming and comfort seeking. We tend to resist change, and to prefer ideas, processes, and environments that are familiar."
"the tools for the last two components: interpreting the changing contexts and implementing the strategy in those contexts. Before you begin executing a decision, just so there’s no confusion as you move forward, ask yourself: Who needs to know my goals and the outcomes I’m working toward? Do they know what the most important objective is? Do they know the positive and negative signs to look for and what trip wires are attached to them?"
- →We’ll never be exceptional at anything unless we raise our standards, both of ourselves and of what’s possible. For most of us, that sounds like a lot of work. We gravitate toward being soft and complacent. We’d rather coast. That’s fine. Just realize this: if you do what everyone else does, you can expect the same results that everyone else gets.
- →They’re behavioral programs written into our DNA by natural selection that our brains will automatically execute when triggered unless we stop and take the time to think. They have many names, but for the purposes of this book, let’s call them the emotion default, the ego default, the social default, and the inertia default
- →Admitting error and correcting course is a time-saver that empowers you to avoid making more mistakes in the future. However, mistakes also provide rare opportunities for getting closer to the kind of person you want to be, should you choose to heed their lessons. Use those opportunities wisely! Don’t squander them.
- →Maria’s example illustrates an important point about second-level thinking: it not only helps us avoid future problems, it also uncovers information we need to make a better decision—information we didn’t know we needed before. It’s easy to sit back and think the right information will find you. It won’t!
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