TURN YOUR THINKING AROUND: 8 Ways to Make Better Decisions

Adapted from: Business Insider

(http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-become-more-powerful-2011-12)

1.   Make important decisions in the morning, before you experience "ego depletion"

Freud speculated that the self, or ego, depended on mental activities involving the transfer of energy.... His experiments demonstrated that there is a finite store of mental energy for exerting self-control. As the day wears on, your energy reserves are further depleted. Our finite supply of "decision-making power" means that all of the small decisions add up quickly. Which would explain why shopping is so exhausting. Researchers found that shoppers who "had already made the most decisions in the stores gave up the quickest" on a math test. Once you're mentally depleted, you're more likely to make trade-offs. To compromise is a complex human ability and therefore one of the first to decline when willpower is depleted.  At the end of the day, when we're more physically and mentally fatigued, we're more likely to skip the gym after work or drink more during happy hour. 

2.   Your brain needs glucose in order to make good decisions
Even the wisest people won’t make good choices when they’re not rested and their glucose is low, researchers have found. It’s not a good idea to restructure the organization at 4 p.m and you shouldn’t make major commitments during the cocktail hour. If a decision must be made late in the day, don’t do it on an empty stomach. Grocery retailers discovered this decades ago. After shoppers have made all their decisions in the aisles, their willpower is reduced and they’re vulnerable to any kind of temptation, but especially vulnerable to candy and soda, which are located at the checkout stand.
 

3.   Develop habits and routines to conserve mental energy

We use the same mental energy reserves to fight off temptation as we do to make complex decisions. Smart people develop routines to eliminate stress and conserve energy for important decisions. The most successful people don’t use their willpower as a last-ditch defense to stop themselves from disaster. Rather, they conserve willpower by developing effective habits and routines in school and at work so that they reduce the amount of stress in their lives. They use their self-control not to get through crises but to avoid them. They give themselves enough time to finish a project. For example, they regularly check-up on their car so they can take it to the shop before it breaks down.

4.  Women help groups make better decisions

A study evaluating 192 groups found that those with women had the highest group intelligence, according to research published in the Harvard Business Review.

5.  Because your conscious attention is limited, enlist the help of your unconscious

Even if you don't have the option to delay your decision, engaging in another activity will take your mind off your dilemma and allow your unconscious to surface. 

            6.  Sometimes, it's best to run your ideas by others

     Wise people have a network of people they go to for advice, but they also know when too 
     many ideas complicate their decision-making. 

             7. Deciding NOT to decide -- or having others do it for you

Instead of deliberating every morning whether or not to force yourself to exercise, set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. This makes you accountable to your desired goal without you having to decide everyday. To conserve energy in the short run, this is a good move.

8. Prepare for your moments of weakness -- because we're only human, after all

Good decision making is not a trait of the person, in the sense that it’s always there. It’s a state that fluctuates. Studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings. They avoid temptations like all-you-can-eat buffets and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions. The best decision makers are the ones who know when not to trust themselves. The keys are planning ahead, not overwhelming yourself with choices and conserving your energy because at the end of the day, you do have to make decisions.

A Theory on Why People Learn

A Theory on Why People Learn

By Lowell Ernst

We often talk about teaching people to be lifelong learners. What does that really mean? Why do we investigate some issues while we just let other things go and never think about them again?

Why people learn:

Curiosity - Many issues we learn from caused us to become curious about why something has happened or why a specific decision is being made. This can be caused by genuine curiosity, being annoyed over a decision or a desire to find a better way. Regardless of the source of the curiosity, we have a desire to know more about the issue.

Conviction - If our curiosity is great enough, we are convicted that we must learn more. We can’t let it go without knowing why or sometimes trying to find a better option. When we are convicted, we are motivated to learn more.

Knowledge - We can’t make good decisions until we know enough about a topic. When we don’t know enough to take on the issue, we are naturally motivated to seek out additional information. The challenge comes when people do not have the skills to find what they need to become an informed decision maker. 

Decision Making - At this point we either go to work or we give up based upon the passion of our original conviction. This choice happens based upon previous experiences, our perception of our ability to make a difference and our fixed or growth mindset.

Call to Action - When we choose to dig in and go to work, we have decided we want to do something about the topic. We may be seeking a new solution, understanding a previous decision or trying to counter an opposing viewpoint. This causes us to develop a plan on how we will proceed.  It give us a reason to spend time on the issue and focuses on an end goal.

My reason for reflecting on this is directly related to how leaders think. Great leaders tend to approach their lives thinking they can cause a difference. They reach a call to action quickly because they have a mindset that allows them to view the world as a place where we are called to have an impact rather than constantly being impacted. Our challenge is to create educational and social environments that help more people develop this mindset.

Thinking about Continuous Improvement

The concept of continuous improvement is commonplace in business and industry. Being a constant leaner and more responsive to customer wants has probably never been more important than it is in today’s competitive marketplace. Unfortunately, many industries and organizations without a specific, tangible product (like a school district) have been slower to adopt these philosophies and practices. Continuous Improvement is a core value of Pella Community School District (PCSD) in Pella, IA and it recently adapted a business-like continuous improvement process to solve a problem within the organization.

One continuous improvement process is Kaizen. Japanese for "improvement," or "change for the better,” Kaizen is a philosophy of constant improvement that aims to improve every niche and piece of business, organization or any process. In Kaizen, every piece to an organization (from the board to the CEO to the laborers to other organizations involved) can be changed for the better at all times. If standardized processes and ways of operating are improved, wasted resources and time will decrease and ideally eliminated.

This article is an example of how the thinking in the scope of Kaizen improved the technology support and repair system of PCSD, which had been under-performing for over 10 years. PCSD's example of using this continuous improvement philosophy also highlights the 10 Leaders on Thinking themes to how successful leader's think (see 10/18/2012 post). This themes appear in bold throughout the article.

PCSD was assisted by the Vermeer Corporation which provided an experienced continuous improvement consultant to lead the thinking process (experience matters). PCSD’s Kaizen event was a two-day disciplined thinking process. It led to improvements that increased customer satisfaction, improved productivity and created confidence in PCSD’s ability to meet current and future challenges. The following steps of of Kaizen were explored in PSCD's workshop--what the current reality is, defining the ideal reality and working with the new solution realistically.

Step #1:

Determine Your Current Reality – PCSD’s first step was to determine why the district was not able to meet its customer service pledge to analyze and respond to all technology problems in less than 24 hours. This started with an organized reflective process (reflective thinking) that examined the people involved in decision making, the number of decisions that had to be made and the number of hand-offs that occurred in executing the solution. 

Staff members from all levels of PCSD were assembled for this analysis (collaborative problem solving). It was discovered that help requests could originate from anywhere in the school system and were then reported to the lowest level of authority to fix the problem. This led to as many as 14 people making over 40 decisions and the original request potentially being handed-off 10 or more times before a solution was implemented. The process was further complicated by the fact that a new request on the same problem could cause the system to start all over again. Day 1 of the Kaizen event was spent on collaborative problem solving to determine the current reality and depth of the problem.

Step #2:

Define Your Ideal State – The goal for the technology support and repair system was to have a request prioritized in conjunction with metrics for how long it should take to meet the request (goal oriented thinking). This would lead to measurably improved customer satisfaction and a systemic improvement in the ability of the system to meet the staff’s needs. Ideally a technology support and repair request would have one point of entry, involve a maximum of five people who would make less than 15 decisions with no more than five hand-offs between themselves.

Step #3:

Realistic State – The ideal system referred to in Step #2 is currently being piloted in one school building to isolate the learning curve before the plan is implemented across the entire school district (productive thinking = action). The IT staff must learn what parts of the revised technology support and repair system are theoretical and what parts can be executed as designed. The use of data (designed metrics and measurability of improved customer satisfaction) is causing continual reflection during the pilot experience (constantly learning through experience) and will ultimately lead to further changes in communication, delegation and procedures. No system is perfect and the leadership of PCSD is willing to change their minds when they learn more from their thinking. This will lead to improvements that are sustainable given the existing resources available to the system.

The thinking that was necessary for this practical solution mirrors Jim Collins's ideas about disciplined people: doing disciplined thinking allows them to take disciplined actions. If any of those parts is missing, you will end up with inaction and wasted thinking. Leadership is responsible to make sure that time and efforts are not wasted on short-cuts and that intentional and disciplined steps are taken to make significant change.

For more information on how the Pella Community School District used the Kaizen process, contact –

Lowell Ernst, Director of Curriculum and Instruction

Lowell.ernst@pella.k12.ia.us

641-628-2220

Interview with Bob Demeulenaere

Excerpts from an interview on 12-29-11 with

Bob Demeulenaere

Past President and CEO of Brenton Banks, Inc.,1994 to 2001.

Bob worked 37 years for Brenton Banks in a number of capacities including seven as the first non-family member CEO. Before being sold to Wells Fargo in 2001, Brenton Banks was the largest Iowa based banking company with $2 billion in assets, 43 locations and 679 employees.

Previous experience: Bob was a dish washer before becoming an MP in the military. 

Currently Reading:  That Used To Be Us . . ., Thomas Friedman & Michael Mandelbaum.

One of the best thinkers he has known:  
Buzz Brenton - He could get to the heart of the matter and recognize how to make it change.

Leaders on Thinking: Do you have a process for thinking and decision making?

Bob: I would go to trusted leaders and get them to tell you what they think. In addition, I ask others at random to get their opinions. Having feedback from a broad representation of people will lead to better decision making. Take the time to think it through. In the long term, a couple of days to make a decision will not matter. A process that worked for me was I would have a new idea. I would discuss it with my inner circle management team. Then I would reflect on the idea some more. After some time I would seek out other people in the bank (not just senior management people) and see what they thought. I would again reflect on what I had learned and if I still thought it was a good idea and of benefit to the company we would go with it.

L on T: How do you balance short term and long term goals?

Bob: Make sure short term decisions have long term impact before you respond. When I started as CEO, I consolidated the entire operation into one bank and added 100 sales people on the street. These decisions were meant to change how the industry operated, not just to meet a short term goal.

L on T: How do you improve?

Bob: I constantly learned about what other businesses were doing by reading about them and visiting them. I also listened to books on tape while I ran daily. You need to use the expertise of others as well. You don’t have to have all of the ideas.

I was given two months before I took the CEO job to do whatever I wanted. I used that time to learn where the business should go by talking with countless individuals to find out what they were doing that worked. This gave me the confidence to recommend significant changes. I would recommend this to any organization who is hiring a new leader.

L on T: When is it okay to compromise?

Bob: Quite often the compromise is better than your original idea. The key thing is that a compromise cannot destroy the essence of what you are doing.

L on T: How do you know when you have reached the tipping point for action?

Bob: Gather all the information you can from as many people as you can and think through the impact of the decision. Garner support but remember that everyone does not have to buy into the decision. Once you are convinced, make the call and go.

L on T: What advice would you give someone taking on a new leadership role?

Bob: Go out and spend two months to learn everything you can about your organization and industry. You need to know your business and how it is changing. 

Once the organization’s mission is clear, you become the “Keeper of the Flame.” 

Be certain what you think is happening, is really happening. If you talk to enough people they will tell you what they see and their ideas to make it better. Listen to everyone, as many of them will give you great ideas.Your job is not to manage--if you hired the right people to do that. The Keeper of the Flame focuses the organization on the core.

Recommended Reading List (1-2-12)

The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, Teresa Amable

Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck - Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, Jim Collins

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman