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#Leadership : #DecisionMaking – When #Managers Should be Fair and When they Should Challenge the Rules…Sometimes the Right Decision isn’t the Most Fair, But it Can be a Tricky Line to Toe.

August 22, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

From early in life, we are attuned to the concept of fairness. As kids, if one child gets more candy than others, that is met with cries of, “That’s not fair!” And when we ascend to leadership roles, we often strive to be fair to the people who work for us.

But why do we care so much about fairness?

FAIRNESS VERSUS JUSTICE

Paul Woodruff, in his excellent book The Ajax Dilemma, points out that organizations have ideals they strive to uphold. One key ideal is justice, which is the idea that people should receive the outcomes they deserve for the actions they take and the contributions they make within the organization.

As it turns out, though, justice is hard to enforce, because there are no clear rules about how to relate behavior to outcomes. For example, we know it is wrong to kill another person, but the law has gradations for killing. Soldiers who kill in battle are rewarded for killing. People who kill in self-defense are not punished.

Those who kill accidentally are treated differently than those who intended to kill someone else. We even make a distinction between individuals who coldly calculate whether to kill another person versus those who kill in the heat of passion.

It is so hard to make these kinds of decisions that the legal system spends a lot of time and effort training judges to make distinctions and sets up courts of appeals so that the decision of one judge can be reviewed by others.

Most companies do not have the resources to ensure justice for their employees, so they substitute procedures designed to create reasonable outcomes. As Woodruff points out, these procedures are what he calls the doubles of ideals. They are procedures that resemble the ideal, but do not always lead to the same outcome.

In particular, most companies strive for fairness rather than justice. They create rules that apply equally to everyone and take a lot of the weight of decision making off managers.

The advantage of treating employees fairly as a manager is that it is easy to justify the decisions you make. You can point to the rule that you apply to make a decision, and then people dissatisfied with the outcome cannot blame you for the outcome. If they have a concern, they need to take it up with the people who created the rules rather than with you as enforcer of that rule.

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ENFORCING RULES AND QUESTIONING THEM

When you first take on a managerial role, it is useful to strive for fairness. Learning to navigate leadership positions is hard. There are many times in which procedures that seem to be wrong-headed have benefits downstream in the organization that may not be obvious from your vantage point. Enforcing the rules as given is a way to ensure that you do not make decisions that have unintended consequences.

At the same time, when there are procedures that don’t make sense to you, it is valuable to ask questions of the people above you. Find out why particular procedures have been put in place and what alternatives have been tried before.

The reason to both enforce rules and question them is that as you move higher in an organization’s hierarchy, you have to shift your emphasis from following rules to upholding ideals. Companies succeed not just by following the rules of a market, but by disrupting it. That disruption involves breaking the implicit rules of a market.

Similarly, the decisions you make about personnel in an organization have to become more just as you ascend higher in the ranks. You may identify stellar employees who have not yet paid their dues but deserve more responsibility anyhow. Elevating those individuals may not be fair, but it could be the right thing to do.

Many articles focus on the differences between leadership and management. There is no single factor that separates these concepts. One important difference, though, is that managers are typically bound to execute procedures that are the doubles of core ideals. Leaders must develop the wisdom to know when a particular procedure gets in the way of an ideal, and to make good decisions that fly in the face of easily executed procedures.

FastCompany.com | August 22, 2018 | BY ART MARKMAN 3 MINUTE READ

Your #Career : Using Intuition – Those ‘Gut Feelings’ – To Help Navigate #CareerChoices …The Challenge is That we are Often so Used to #MakingDecisions with our Conscious Mind – Using Logic & Rationality – That we can Easily Dismiss or Miss this Other Source of Crucial Information.

February 13, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

I once was in an interview process for a job I thought I really wanted. Deep down though I had a feeling that maybe it wasn’t the right job for me. Something just felt off. But I didn’t listen. Instead, I learned the hard way that those small inner nudges and gut feelings we have – they really do know what’s up. And (sometimes at least) we’d really benefit from listening to them.

Collectively, I would call these feelings, inner sense, or nudges our intuition. Accessing our intuition is particularly helpful in situations where our rational/logical mind can craft seemingly well-reasoned, good cases for either side of an argument or for multiple different choices and we’re left feeling confused and unsure. This happens both in navigating major decisions in our career and day-to-day at work. Tapping into the wisdom of our intuition can provide additional insight to take into consideration and help us make the choice at hand.

The challenge is that we are often so used to making decisions with our conscious mind – using logic and rationality – that we can easily dismiss or miss this other source of crucial information.

So, how can we cultivate being more in touch with our intuition?

Reduce Stress

We can’t hear the signals from our intuition when we are stressed. When we are too stressed our body is in survival mode and the only signal it’s sending is to get out of this situation. So reducing stress levels is a primary first step in being able to tune into our intuition. Perhaps you’re thinking that reducing your stress is easier said than done, but even just taking a few slow breaths to calm your nervous system can help you tune in. My next point can also help lower stress levels.

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Meditate

The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School teaches that through meditation we can gain greater awareness of our thoughts. And while we can’t stop our thoughts, meditation can lessen our natural tendency to identify with, believe, or get hooked by them. In my experience, meditation creates space for us to see and feel things more clearly – the space we need to tune out those arguments spinning in our mind and tune in to our genuine selves.

So, if you’re not already a meditator, give it a try. Headspace is an app with some fantastic introductory 10-minute meditations. It doesn’t have to be a lot of meditation time to start being able to tune in. After you’ve experienced the mental space and peace meditation can bring, you can try to access that when you’re in a situation where your mind is chattering away when you’re trying to make a choice.

TWEET THIS

meditation creates space for us to see and feel things more clearly – the space we need to tune out those arguments spinning in our mind and tune in to our genuine selves.

Try listening to your intuition and see what happens when you take its cue!

A great way to start getting familiar with your intuition is to start small with “low risk” decisions at work or at home. Maybe as simple as deciding where to take the team for lunch, or what movie to watch with your partner. When a decision point arises, try to tune in, then take the option your intuition is telling you. Observe the result. This builds your muscle for tuning in and builds your experience in taking the actions it suggests. As you experiment you can reflect and fine-tune your ability to read yourself and build more confidence in the information your intuition provides. Over time you can begin to use it for choices that feel more “risky.”

Imagine yourself in future scenarios and observe

When you’re struggling to make a decision, imagine yourself having already made the decision to do X. For example, imagine you’ve already accepted the job (ex. you have the salary, the title, you’ve been at the desk with the window view for 3 months). Now, in this future hypothetical reality, how do you feel? Do this again for each option (ex. with the option of not accepting the job, or accepting a different job). Try to find the option that once taken feels the best.

My life coach mentor and teacher, Martha Beck, calls this kind of technique using your “body compass.” Note: just be aware of fear tripping you up. You can still take an action that feels good and is what you really want, but also have it be a bit scary – fear is often a normal part of stepping outside of your comfort zone or trying something new.

With all of this I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t listen to our mind and logic when making decisions. But, sometimes our intuition can have a lot of helpful information to add to our decision-making process. And I for one on many past occasions in my professional life wished I had checked in and listened to it more.

—

Note: I have completed the Martha Beck life coach training program

This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment.

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And to learn more about my career coaching services for young professionals click here. I’d love to help you!

Forbes.com | February 13, 2018 | Sara Young Wang , WOMEN@FORBES ..

I’m a #careercoach focused on helping you find happiness at work Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

#Leadership : Ask Yourself These Five Questions Before Making Any Major Decisions…Asking these Pointed Questions will Illuminate your Choice and its Implications in a Totally Different Way.

August 17, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

The most important decisions, whether in work or in life, never really seem to fall in the black or white. They linger in the gray, where they can remain for a dangerously long time. The journalist Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, “A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”

Instead of letting circumstance make your next vital decision, Joseph L. Badaracco, the John Shad professor of business ethics at Harvard Business School, believes that the answer will reveal itself after answering five important questions.

As Badaracco writes in the Harvard Business Review:

Where do these questions come from? Over many centuries and across many cultures, they have emerged as men and women with serious responsibilities have struggled with difficult problems. They express the insights of the most penetrating minds and compassionate spirits of human history. I have relied on them for years, in teaching MBA candidates and counseling executives, and I believe that they can help you, your team, and your organization navigate the grayest of gray areas.

1. WHAT ARE THE NET, NET CONSEQUENCES OF ALL MY OPTIONS?

The first step in making any important decision, suggests Badaracco, is to objectively analyze all of the possibilities, and consider their real-world outcomes. He explains that this process needs to be distinguished from a cost-benefit analysis, and shouldn’t be limited to outcomes that can be measured or counted. After all, if numbers and data could solve this query, they wouldn’t be in the gray zone in the first place.

“Your job is to put aside your initial assumption about what you should do, gather a group of trusted advisers and experts, and ask yourself and them, ‘What could we do? And who will be hurt or helped, short-term and long-term, by each option?” writes Badaracco.

While this task is more difficult than it seems, it’s a strategy that chess players learn to master. The game requires players to look at the board and reimagine how it will shift based on theirs and their opponent’s decisions.

“You’re constantly looking two, three, four moves ahead,” entrepreneur and former star of the youth chess circuit Justin Moore once told Fast Company. “If you do this move, what’s the countermove? What are all the countermoves? And then for all of those, what are all of my potential countermoves? Chess is constantly teaching you to think about what comes next, and what comes after that, and what the repercussions could be,” Moore explained.

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2. WHAT ARE MY CORE OBLIGATIONS?

Whether it’s your boss, your shareholders, or your children, the decisions we make in life will often affect those around us, and we must consider our obligations to each stakeholder, says Badaracco. He adds that we will often be tempted to only consider immediate stakeholders, most likely the ones that sign our paychecks, but big decisions require us to consider the deeper responsibility of our actions.

“How can you figure out specifically what these duties oblige you to do in a particular situation?” he writes.

By relying on what philosophers call your ‘moral imagination.’ That involves stepping out of your comfort zone, recognizing your biases and blind spots, and putting yourself in the shoes of all key stakeholders, especially the most vulnerable ones.

3. WHAT WILL WORK IN THE WORLD AS IT IS?

This question requires us to consider the contextual circumstances of our decisions in a realistic way, the way the world really exists today, rather than the way we would like it to.

“After considering consequences and duties, you need to think about practicalities: Of the possible solutions to your problem, which is most likely to work? Which is most resilient? And how resilient and flexible are you?” writes Badaracco. “To answer those questions, you need to map the force field of power around you: Who wants what and how hard and successfully each person can fight for his aims.”

4. WHO ARE WE?

This self-reflective question, explains Badaracco, forces us to consider how our decisions shape the person or organization we really are, and not the one we want or imagine ourselves to be. By acknowledging that such decisions shape our sense of self, he believes that an understanding of the self is vital in the decision-making process.

“This question asks you to step back and think about your decision in terms of relationships, values, and norms,” he writes. “What really matters to your team, company, community, culture? How can you act in a way that reflects and expresses those belief systems? If they conflict, which should take precedence?”

To help arrive at this answer, Badaracco suggests thinking about the decision as a chapter in a person or company’s history, and how that chapter would fit into the overall narrative. “Of all the paths you might choose in this gray area, which would best express what your organization stands for?” he writes.

5. WHAT CAN I LIVE WITH?

Good judgment, Badaracco writes, is as much about understanding and analyzing the situation as it is about staying true to our values and ideals. Ultimately, the big decisions force us to determine what matters most and what matters least.

“How will you figure out what you can live with?” asks Badaracco. “End your conversations with others, close the door, mute the electronics, and stop to reflect. Imagine yourself explaining your decision to a close friend or a mentor—someone you trust and respect deeply. Would you feel comfortable? How would that person react?”

via: Harvard Business Review

FastCompany.com | August 15, 2016 | JARED LINDZON 08.15.16 5:00 AM

#Leadership : 7 Things Deeply Intuitive People Do Differently…Steve Jobs Once Said that Intuition is More Powerful than Intellect.

August 12, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

As it turns out, Jobs was onto something, and the scientific community backs him up. It seems that we’ve been giving intuition far too little respect.

“Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” — Jonas Salk

In a Salk Institute study, participants were asked to play a card game where they pulled cards from two different decks. The decks were rigged so that one would “win” more often than the other, but the participants didn’t know that — at least, not overtly. It took about 50 cards for participants to consciously realize that the decks were different and about 80 to figure out what that difference was. However, what was really interesting was that it only took about 10 cards for their palms to start sweating slightly every time they reached for a card from the “losing” deck. It was about that same time that they started subconsciously favoring the “winning” deck.

While that’s all very interesting in a clinical setting, you have to ask yourself if it holds true in real life. Apparently, it does. When it comes to making major decisions, your intuition can matter just as much as your intellect.

The science is clear: intuition is a powerful force of the mind that can help us to make better decisions. Fortunately, intuition is a skill that you can hone by practicing the habits of highly intuitive people.

In one study, car buyers who relied on careful analysis of all of the available information were happy with their purchases about 25% of the time, while buyers who made quicker, more intuitive purchases were happy with their purchases about 60% of the time.

Intuition comes from the primitive brain; it’s an artifact of the early days of man when the brain’s ability to detect hidden dangers ensured our survival. These days, we use this capability so little that we don’t know how to listen to it properly.

Whether you listen to it or not, your intuition is healthy and functioning. If you want to make better decisions in life, you’d do well to brush up on your intuition skills. You can start by emulating some of the habits of highly intuitive people.

1. They slow down enough to hear their inner voice. Before you can pay attention to your intuition, you first have to be able to hear it amid the cacophony of your busy life. You have to slow down and listen, which often requires solitude. Taking some time away from the everyday, even something as brief as going for a walk, is a great way to turn up the volume of your intuition.

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2. They follow their inner voice. One of the primary reasons that some people are more intuitive than others is that they actually listen to their gut feeling instead of dismissing or doubting it. And that doesn’t mean that they ignore their analytical mind and their critical thinking skills; there’s a difference between using reason as a system of checks and balances and using it to talk yourself out of what your intuition knows to be true.

3. They practice empathic accuracy. I’d probably lose you if I said that highly intuitive people read minds, so I’ll use the scientific term: empathic accuracy. It’s not magic; it’s an intuitive awareness of what other people are thinking and feeling, using cues such as body language and tone of voice. It’s an extremely powerful form of empathy that helps foster deep connections with other people.

4. They practice mindfulness. “Mindfulness” sounds even more New-Agey than trusting your intuition, but it’s really just a fancy term for focusing on being in the moment. Mindfulness is a great technique to filter out all of the distractions in your environment — and your brain. When you do that, you can hear your intuition loud and clear.

5. They nurture their creativity. Did you ever have one of those paint-by-number kits when you were a kid? Talk about turning art into a science — all you have to do is put the right color in the right little space. You may end up with a pretty painting, but the only intuition involved is guessing what colors you’re supposed to use in those really tiny spaces. No paint-by-numbers kit in the world can make a skilled artist create something as novel and monumental as the Sistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa. The missing ingredient is intuition. And, just as intuition is the secret ingredient in creativity, being intentionally creative strengthens your use of intuition.

6. They trust their gut. Have you ever made a decision and immediately started to feel sick, maybe even kind of clammy? Well, that affective experience is the body’s way of informing you that the decision your analytic mind came to is at odds with your instinct.

7. They analyze their dreams. If you accept the science that demonstrates the power of intuition, it’s not much of a leap to accept that our dreams are often manifestations of intuition. Sure, sometimes dreams are nonsense, but they often try to tell us something. Intuitive people don’t just think, “Wow, that was a weird dream!”; they ask themselves, “Where did that come from, and what can I take away from it?”

Bringing It All Together

The science is clear: intuition is a powerful force of the mind that can help us to make better decisions. Fortunately, intuition is a skill that you can hone by practicing the habits of highly intuitive people.

Entrepreneur.com | August 12, 2016 | Travis Bradberry

#Leadership : A 3-Step Technique for Deciding Which Advice to Follow…If you Ask 10 People for Advice, you’ll Get 10 Different Prescriptions. You can’t Act on All of Them so Which Person Do you Listen To?

July 28, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Whether it’s getting the green light for a new venture or securing the next round of funding, entrepreneurs are constantly faced with the challenge of communicating their business ideas and plans with stakeholders – board members, advisers and investors.

In addition to serving as a status update, stakeholder interactions are huge learning opportunities for entrepreneurs, but they are largely underutilized for two reasons.

First, we tend to only share good news with our stakeholders and hide any bad news from them – for as long as we can anyway. In the Lean Startup world, we call this “playing success theater.” When you don’t expose the problems in your business, you close yourself off to new ideas that might become your next breakthrough insight.

“A business should be run like an aquarium, where everybody can see what’s going on.”
– Jack Stack, The Great Game of Business

Second, when we do get advice, we tend to want to follow all the advice we are given, especially when it’s coming from someone we respect or someone who is paying the bills. Left unchecked, this does more to distract and derail you than help.

“Advisor Paradox: Hire advisors for advice but don’t follow it, apply it.”
-Venture Hacks

If you ask 10 people for advice, you’ll get 10 different prescriptions. You can’t act on all of them so which person do you listen to? Should you listen to the advice coming from the person who had the most recent exit, or the person who made the most money?

Here are three ways to overcome this advisor whiplash problem.

1. Expose the problems.
Don’t pitch your advisors or simply seek validation by asking them what they think about your solutions. When you present skewed or selective data to advisors, you create bias, and their advice will be much less helpful.

Instead of simply pitching your solutions, objectively share your business model progress story, and let them uncover any problems. An effective way of telling this story is with a one-page diagram of your current business model depicted below using the Lean Canvas worksheet.

When sharing your business model story, don’t just read the Lean Canvas aloud, because people can read faster than you can talk. Instead, use your canvas as a visual aid. While your advisor is scanning the canvas, share the backstory behind your business. Answer the following questions:

How did you stumble on this customer or problem?
What’s been done so far?
What’s keeping you up at night?

2. Solicit possible solutions.
You can usually deliver an effective business model progress story within five minutes. With that out of the way, you are now ready to solicit their advice. This is the heart of the conversation.

Leaving the Lean Canvas open, in front of people, almost always evokes a reaction because it helps them visualize the entire business model, and they typically always have an opinion.

“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.”
– Charles Kettering

If needed, ask them specific questions to trigger the conversation.

What do they consider to be the riskiest aspect of this plan?
Have they overcome similar risks? How?
How would they go about testing these risks?

3. Test big ideas with small experiments.

The key is not taking the feedback you receive as judgment or validation but rather as a means for prioritizing what’s riskiest in your business model. If eight out of 10 advisors raise similar concerns, there’s a high likelihood those problems are worth prioritizing.

However, it’s still your job to own your business model. Remember that you are the ultimate domain expert of your own business. You don’t get a gold star for following advice but for achieving results.

Using validation techniques, such as customer interviews and split tests, it’s possible to test any idea or strategy by conducting multiple small, fast, additive experiments.

Your next course of action should be crafting such an experiment to test the efficacy of the advice. Then double down on the best advice (and advisors), and ignore the rest.

Entrepreneur.com | July 28, 2016 | Ash Maurya

#Leadership : How To Improve Your Decision Making Skills…In Order for the Brain to Make Decisions, it Often Relies on Short Cuts.

July 17, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Sometimes we may not have all the necessary information available, other times we only use a limited amount of information offered. This means we regularly make decisions based on just a few facts or what first comes to mind based on our previous experience and knowledge. These strategies are known as heuristics and can be useful for speed and agility, but can also lead to all sorts of errors. It is therefore, useful to be aware of this.

To empower everyone this way will lead to all employees making better decisions quickly and effectively. And think how much life at work will be improved.

If you know that you, like everyone else, is susceptible to cognitive heuristics you can take this into account when making important decisions and seek more information than you think you needed in the first place. It sounds obvious, but is not always acted upon.

Think of an everyday business scenario. You’re confident in your ability to interview people and select the right candidate for the job. You spend time with your new employee, explaining the ethos of the company and what needs to be done. In fact, you pride yourself on your ability to delegate.

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As far as you are concerned you have laid the foundations for success, so why is their ability to make a decision so hard, even on relatively minor things? In fact, it’s driving you to distraction because people are just not thinking for themselves and making a responsible judgment.

Very little is done without a decision being made, so it’s vital that everyone in your team is able to make decisions quickly and skilfully. If you or your people hesitate for too long, money can be lost and morale can plummet. And in our fast-changing world this is more important today than ever before.

Every employee must not only be capable, but also feel confident and clear in making decisions quickly within the guidelines of basic company policy. Of course, the bigger problems will need to be presented to the next level of management. But for everyday challenges the agility of each person’s judgements is vital for a company to run smoothly.

There will be times however, that a decision proves to be difficult and more time is needed. Time for seeking informed opinions from others is sensible, because a poor decision is of no benefit to anyone.

So how do we help our people to develop better decision making skills?

Being aware of how the brain has a preference for short cuts is a useful start. But it is also important that everyone who works for your company understands the bigger picture, the reasons you are selling your particular products or services, where the business wants to be in 6 months, 1 year and 5 years time. When everyone is aware of the ‘grand plan’ they will know where they fit in the great scheme and how they can contribute. This kind of clarity leads to sensible decisions being made.

This can be extended to where the business fits in society and how it benefits others. When we have a balanced outlook on life we are empowered to calmly work things out from experience.

Calm leads to the fourth enabler for decision making. When we work on the first three suggestions printed here, we are more likely to be stress free. If we become chronically stressed, cortisol the stress hormone interferes with our memory, motivation and ability to think clearly. It makes sense therefore, to put these foundations in place so as to remain calm, efficient and even healthy.

To recap, the four suggestions offered are:

Be aware of cognitive heuristics – ask more questions and gather more data than you originally thought you needed.
Make sure everyone in the business is aware of the bigger picture and how they can contribute well.
Look further out to society in general and where the business benefits others. This knowledge and experience will empower improved decision making.
These first three tips will help you stay calm and not succumb to disenabling stressors.

To empower everyone this way will lead to all employees making better decisions quickly and effectively. And think how much life at work will be improved.

Forbes.com | July 17, 2016 | Lynda Shaw

#Leadership : This is How you make Better Decisions, According to Science…Yeah, it Can Really be that Simple: Thinking about How you Would Help Others is Often the Best Way to Help Yourself.

June 27, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Life would be a lot easier if we just knew how to make good decisions. Research shows we all make a lot of bad ones, according to Chip Heath’s “Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work.”

With careers:

“More than half of teachers quit their jobs within four years. In fact, one study in Philadelphia schools found that a teacher was almost two times more likely to drop out than a student.”

In our jobs:

“A study showed that when doctors reckoned themselves ‘completely certain’ about a diagnosis, they were wrong 40% of the time.”

And in our personal lives:

“… an estimated 61,535 tattoos were reversed in the United States in 2009.”

We get a lot of sketchy tips based on unreliable sources. So what does the scientific research say about how to make good decisions?

For starters, you might think you would be better off if you just had more information about the choice at hand.

And you’d be wrong …

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You don’t need more info, you need the right info

In the past 20 years we went from a world where information was difficult to come by to a world where we can’t get away from the stuff. The phrase “TMI” is now more true than ever.

When doctors are diagnosing heart attacks, the glut of information isn’t just a nuisance — it can be deadly, according to “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”:

“What Goldman’s algorithm indicates, though, is that the role of those other factors is so small in determining what is happening to the man right now that an accurate diagnosis can be made without them … that extra information is more than useless. It’s harmful. It confuses the issues. What screws up doctors when they are trying to predict heart attacks is that they take too much information into account.”

Solution?

Spend less time trying to amass all the information and more time better defining the problem so you can find the right information.

As Dan Pink explains in his bestseller, “To Sell Is Human“, research shows one of the hallmarks of great advances in both the arts and sciences is spending more time on clarifying problems.

Via “To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others“:

“‘The quality of the problem that is found is a forerunner of the quality of the solution that is attained…’ Getzels concluded.”

And people who focus on the problem instead of the answer end up more successful in their careers.

Via “To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others“:

“In 1970, Csikszentmihalyi and Getzels tracked down these same artists, now out of school and working for a living to see how they were faring. About half the students had left the art world altogether. The other half was working, and often succeeding, as professional artists. The composition of that second group? Nearly all were problem finders back in their school days.”

(To learn what Harvard research says will make you more successful and happier, click here.)

Alright, you’re clarifying the problem and focused on getting the right info. Good. So now you need to be ultra-rational and logical, unswayed by emotion in order to make a good choice, right? Wrong again …

Feelings are your friends

Being calm definitely helps when trying to make good decisions — but ignoring emotions is silly.

As Stanford professor Baba Shiv explains, choices can’t be made without feelings.

Via “The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive“:

“In the late ’80s and through the ’90s, says Shiv, neuroscientists “started providing evidence for the diametric opposite viewpoint” to rational-choice theory: ‘that emotion is essential for and fundamental to making good decisions.'”

And not only do we need feelings to make decisions, engaging them also leads to betterdecisions.

Professor Timothy Wilson, author of “Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change“, says feeling beats thinking when it comes to relationship predictions:

“It was the people in the ‘gut feeling’ group whose ratings predicted whether they were still dating their partner several months later. As for the navel gazers, their satisfaction ratings did not predict the outcome of their relationships at all.”

And matters of the heart aren’t the only place where feelings help. Empathy can be a big positive when trying to make good choices. Research shows doctors who feel empathy make better decisions for their patients.

Wharton professor Adam Grant, author of the bestseller “Give and Take“, told me:

“There is a great study by Turner and colleagues showing that when radiologists saw a photo of the patient whose x-ray they were about to scan, they empathized more with the person. They saw that person as more of a human being as opposed to just an x-ray. As a result, they wrote longer reports and they had greater diagnostic accuracy, significantly.”

Certainly there are times when we need to think things through and be very rational. So how do you know whether to go with your gut or not?

For simple decisions without many factors involved (What soda should I buy?) be rational.
For very complex or weighty decisions (Am I in love?) trust your gut.

Via “How We Decide“:

As Dijksterhuis demonstrated, when you ask the prefrontal cortex to make (complex) decisions, it makes consistent mistakes… It might sound ridiculous, but it makes scientific sense: Think less about those items that you care a lot about. Don’t be afraid to let your emotions choose.

Now what about when you’re tired and it’s hard to think? Don’t worry — research says go with your gut.

And what about when you’re really really tired? Just go to bed. Studies show the old saw is true: “sleeping on it” works.

(To learn the #1 decision-making secret of astronauts, samurai, Navy SEALs and psychopaths, click here.)

Okay, you’ve defined the problem, got the right info and you’re not ignoring your feelings. What’s a key tool most people ignore that will let you know you should trust your decisions?

Know your strengths

Modern science is awesome but here you may wanna take a lesson from the ancient Greeks: “Know Thyself.”

There are few things that can truly guide powerful decisions more than knowledge of who you really are and what you’re good at. And the research agrees.

Definitely trust your gut on a subject — if it’s something you’re an expert at:

A new study from researchers at Rice University, George Mason University and Boston College suggests you should trust your gut — but only if you’re an expert… Across both studies, participants who possessed expertise within the task domain performed on average just as well intuitively as analytically. In addition, experts significantly outperformed novices when making their decisions intuitively but not when making their decisions analytically.

I know what some of you are thinking: But I’m not sure what my strengths are.

No sweat. All you need is a pen, paper and time. Keep a “decision diary.”

Peter Drucker, author of “The Effective Executive“, and one of the most influential thinkers on the subject of management, recommends monitoring what you do and noting what gets results over time:

“Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations… Practiced consistently, this simple method will show you within a fairly short period of time, maybe two or three years, where your strengths lie — and this is the most important thing to know.”

Don’t trust your memory. Write it down. Make it a game. See where you score highly and not so highly.

Good at work decisions but bad when it comes to your personal life? Now you’ll know when you can trust your gut and when you may need some help.

(To learn the 4 lifehacks from ancient philosophy that will make you happier, click here.)

All the ideas so far are great but there’s one critical thing that’s missing: when do you stop deciding? When is it time to pull the trigger?

Make a ‘good enough’ decision

Don’t sweat making the absolute 100% best decision. We all know being a perfectionist can be stressful — and neuroscience backs this up. Trying to be perfect overwhelms your brain and makes you feel out of control.

Via “The Upward Spiral“:

“Trying for the best, instead of good enough, brings too much emotional ventromedial prefrontal activity into the decision-making process. In contrast, recognizing that good enough is good enough activates more dorsolateral prefrontal areas, which helps you feel more in control …”

As Swarthmore professor Barry Schwartz said in my interview with him: “Good enough is almost always good enough.”

Sound too easy? Too simplistic? Okay, let’s look at a real world example of how people at the highest levels make decisions.

James Waters was Deputy Director of Scheduling at The White House. (Word on the street is they make some pretty big decisions there.) What did James tell me?

“A good decision now is better than a perfect decision in two days”:

“Being able to make decisions when you know you have imperfect data is so critical. I was always taught that ‘A good decision now is better than a perfect decision in two days.’ Many people I know in business recoil at that statement. Many colleagues in graduate school had come from places where they were analysts at a company and their job was to analyze and analyze and analyze. They couldn’t believe somebody would say that you should actually encourage people to make a decision with imperfect information — but I firmly believe you should. I think that’s really important for leaders to incorporate. It’s something that the White House has to do all the time. It’s great to analyze things but at some stage you’re just spinning your wheels.:

So focus on “good enough” instead of overthinking the problem. And if you do, you get an extra bonus: research shows your decisions are more likely to be ethical ones.

(To learn the four rituals that neuroscience says will make you happy, click here.)

Alright, we covered a lot. Let’s round everything up — and learn the one simple question that can help you make solid decisions when you’re crunched for time …

To sum up

Here’s how to make good decisions:

You don’t need more info, you need the right info: Clarify the problem and get relevant data, not all the data.
Feelings are not the enemy: For simple choices, use raw brainpower. For complex choices, trust intuition.
If you’re an expert in the area, trust your gut: Not sure if you’re an expert? Keep a decision diary.
“Good enough is almost always good enough”: Trying to be perfect makes your brain miserable.

And if you forget everything above, what one thing should you remember?

In my interview with Duke professor Dan Ariely (author of “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions“) he said you’re more likely to make a good decision if you “take the outside perspective.” What’s that mean?

Just ask yourself, “What advice would I give to someone else in this situation?”:

“If I had to give advice across many aspects of life, I would ask people to take what’s called ‘the outside perspective.’ And the outside perspective is easily thought about: ‘What would you do if you made the recommendation for another person?’ And I find that often when we’re recommending something to another person, we don’t think about our current state and we don’t think about our current emotions. We actually think a bit more distantly from the decision and often make the better decision because of that.”

Yeah, it can really be that simple: thinking about how you would help others is often the best way to help yourself.

Businessinsider.com | June 27, 2016 | Eric Barker

#Leadership : How To Handle Good And Bad Mistakes…Mistakes Happen. Every Day, they Do. It is What Happens Next That Is the Critical & a Too Often Missed Leadership Piece of the Puzzle.

March 30, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Yes Virginia, there are good mistakes. They need to be handled differently than do bad mistakes. In general, encourage intentional mistakes with minor impact and consider, excuse or prevent the rest.

Mistakes happen. Every day, they do. It is what happens next that is the critical and a too often missed leadership piece of the puzzle. Do we overlook them, acknowledge them, take action to reset the course, and/or learn from them for maximum impact with clear accountability? Therein is the opportunity for the mistake to set the exceptional BRAVE leaders apart.

Intention and impact

While most mistakes are unintentional, evolution and survival depend on continual learning and adaptation – often from intentional mistakes. At the same time there’s a material difference between the impact different mistakes make. One of the Gore Company’s guiding principles is that everyone should consult with other associates “before taking actions that might be “below the waterline”–causing serious damage to the company.” Hence our general guidance above.

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Encourage intentional mistakes with minor impact

Even if you are sure plan A is right, push your team to test plans bracketing plan A. These might include things like increased and decreased investment plans at the same time as your “right” approach. Two of the three approaches will be mistakes. That’s how you get cheap learning and growth out of intentional mistakes.

Handle intentional mistakes with minor impact by encouraging others to make them.

Consider intentional mistakes with major impact

There are going to be times when you must bet the ranch. There are going to be times when that bet goes wrong. One of the hallmarks of BRAVE leadership is an ability to take and manage those risks.

Handle intentional mistakes with major impact by understanding the risks below the waterline, gathering objective data, consulting with others with diverse perspectives and considering your options carefully. Tapping into diverse perspectives is one of the best ways to get around groupthink. If all you’re going to do is talk to people that agree with you, don’t waste everyone’s time. Instead, listen carefully to those with different points of view.

Excuse or apologize for unintentional mistakes with minor impact

In a recap I circulated about my earlier article on Why You Should Eliminate Your Chief Innovation Officer, I mistakenly referred to eliminating ChiefInformation Officers. Several people pointed out the misplaced word. Many even defended Information Officers. While the mistake was completely unintentional and all my fault, it had the benefit of allowing me to reconnect with all sorts of people. I thanked them, apologized, and moved on.

You can get away with unintentional mistakes with minor impact – once. Own up to the mistake, fix the issue and make sure it never happens again. In these cases it’s never the mistake that gets you. It’s the cover up.

Prevent unintentional mistakes with major impact by deploying redundant systems

These are the mistakes that sink ships or companies or reputations. You read about these every day: the trading company that suffers a computer glitch; the otherwise well-run company that misunderstands the true financials of a big acquisition; VolksWagen completely failing to live up to its own values. These can be what Warren Bennis and Steven Sample refer to as “final failures”.

Handle unintentional mistakes with major impact by mitigating risk. Knowing there are going to be some unintentional mistakes, build in redundant systems to check or protect things. The builders of the Panama Canal had redundant systems all over the place so no ship could unintentionally knock open the door to a lock and wipe out everything down hill. Learn from them.

Here’s the advice:

Encourage intentional mistakes with minor impact.
Consider intentional mistakes with major impact.
Excuse or apologize for unintentional mistakes with minor impact.
Prevent unintentional mistakes with major impact by deploying redundant systems.

Minor Impact	Once	Cheap Learning
Major Impact	Redundant Systems	Considered Choice
	Unintentional	Intentional

East Tenth Group’s Michelle Tenzyk sums it up well:

Mistakes happen. Every day, they do. It is what happens next that is the critical and a too often missed leadership piece of the puzzle. Do we overlook them, acknowledge them, take action to reset the course, and/or learn from them for maximum impact with clear accountability? Therein is the opportunity for the mistake to set the exceptional BRAVE leaders apart.

Forbes.com | March 30, 2016 | George Bradt

#Leadership : 15 Tricks for Making Better Decisions Faster…The Thing about Most Important Decisions is That you Usually Don’t Have much Time to Make them. Question: What is One Trick you Use to Make Faster, Better Decisions?

February 13, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

“Measure the weight of a decision against your established set of core priorities for the company. Will the decision affect the top priority? Then allow yourself more time to deliberate and analyze various outcomes. If the decision pertains to one of your lower priorities or business goals, trust your instincts, get the opinion of one or two stakeholders, or delegate.”
–ZACH ROBBINS, Leadnomics

1- Trust My Gut

“It’s become cliched because it works. Trust your instincts. Your brain is an incredibly powerful machine capable of amazing things, including making good decisions. The best decisions are often the ones you make the fastest, before you have a chance to second-guess yourself over and over.”

–BRITTANY HODAK, ZinePak

2- Recognize the Danger of Indecision

“The most successful entrepreneurs recognize that they do not have time to get all the facts for the dozens of decisions they make each day. Instead, they need to gather just enough information to make sound decisions so their company can move forward. Some of those decisions will be wrong, but it is better to learn from those mistakes and try again than to be immobilized by indecision.”

–DOUG BEND, Bend Law Group, PC

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3- Acknowledge What I’m Trying to Optimize For

“Making decisions can be difficult when you don’t exactly know what you’re trying to accomplish. A great mentor asked me once what I was trying to optimize for in my personal life when I asked for feedback on deciding whether I should move or not. I’ve since used this thought process of thinking through what I’m trying to optimize for in different scenarios to help bring the best option to light.”

–KELSEY MEYER, Influence & Co.

4- Focus on What’s Most Important

“As an entrepreneur you will often be faced with a variety of difficult decisions. These decisions are so difficult because they tend to head in very different directions. The reason that a mission statement is so important for a company is because it is vital for decision making. Keeping that in mind allows you to focus only on the decisions that keep you on course.”

–JAMES SIMPSON, GoldFire Studios

5- Establish Litmus Tests Early On

“The best way to quickly know if you’re making an on or off track decision is to know what your gut check tests are. For us, when it comes to rolling out new features, building on consumer asks, or generally redirecting resources, we look to our established product principles, brand values and culture characteristics. If what we are contemplating doesn’t measure up or fit in, we don’t do it.”

–SHARAM FOULADGAR-MERCER, AirPR

6- Use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix

“Once I learned of the Eisenhower decision matrix, I realized I had been putting off extremely important tasks and decisions simply because they weren’t urgent. Learning how Ike made decisions has made me more confident, and therefore faster, at making good decisions.”

–BRENNAN WHITE, Cortex

7- Survey the Audience

“Nothing is better than asking your audience or trusted advisors for their input. There are many resources for surveys; however, if you need a faster turnaround and don’t want to mess with it, create an email list that you can easily use from time to time. You’ll be amazed on how often they don’t agree with what you originally wanted to do, and usually for good reason.”

–ANTHONY JOHNSON, American Injury Attorney Group

8- Focus on Getting to 90 Percent

“Particularly in meetings, the last ten percent of a decision is what puts you far over the time limit. Once you hit ninety percent, you can often make the right decision and table the minutia for follow up.”

–SAM SAXTON, Salter Spiral Stair and Mylen Stairs

9- Ask, “Does This Really Matter?”

“I first ask myself if this decision really matters. Next I ask, “Does this really matter for me, for my business and further, does it matter right now?” Many times the answer is actually no. There are things that I feel strongly about but that don’t matter to whatever I’m trying to get done at the moment. I can save myself time struggling through a decision that doesn’t even need to be made.”

–ERICA DHAWAN, Cotential

10- Prioritize and Delegate

“Making better decisions comes down to prioritization and delegation. Prioritize the decisions you need to make by impact on your business and allocate your time accordingly. If you’re spending too much time on decisions that aren’t vital, delegate the less essential decisions and review recommendations quickly together to keep the team and business moving forward.”

–JESS LEVIN, Carats & Cake

11- Give Myself a Deadline for the Decision

“It’s good to set a deadline for a decision, such as at the end of the meeting, the day, or before the end of the quarter. This creates a sense of urgency, keeping things moving forward, but you’re also likely to avoid paralysis by analysis. In fact, it’s very easy to overthink things and make bad decisions because of it, as you might introduce doubts that conflict with your gut instincts.”

–ANDY KARUZA, brandbuddee

12- Chart the Decision on a Graph

“Put cost of the decision (time or money) on the x-axis, and put impact on your business of the decision on the y-axis. Chart the outcome. If its low cost/high impact, then it’s a no-brainer. If high impact/high cost, then plan the appropriate resources to make it happen. If its low impact, then chuck it away. ”

NICK FRIEDMAN, College Hunks Hauling Junk

13- Toss a Coin

“Last year, the Freakonomics team conducted a research study challenging their fans to make a decision based on flipping a coin. Participants would have to act based on the randomized coin flip and take follow-up surveys. Similarly, when I have trouble making a decision, I also flip a coin and go with what the coin dictates. If I’m really not happy with the coin toss, then I go with the opposite.”

–FIRAS KITTANEH, AstraBeds

14- Always Do a Pre-Mortem Analysis

“As an entrepreneur you always deal with uncertainty, which can stop you from making big decisions quickly. When I make big decisions, I always do a pre-mortem analysis on if this initiative or decision goes the wrong way, why will it happen. This allows me to analyze both the upside and downside quickly. If the downside is not high, I make aggressive decisions quickly.”

–KELSEY RECHT, VenueBook

15- Reference Your Core Priorities

“Measure the weight of a decision against your established set of core priorities for the company. Will the decision affect the top priority? Then allow yourself more time to deliberate and analyze various outcomes. If the decision pertains to one of your lower priorities or business goals, trust your instincts, get the opinion of one or two stakeholders, or delegate.”

–ZACH ROBBINS, Leadnomics

Businessinsider.com | February 13, 2016 | YEC, BusinessCollective

#Leadership : How to Train your Brain to Make Better Decisions…Researchers have Shown this Growth-Mindset #Strategy of Changing How you Interpret an Event will Change Negative Response Patterns.

December 20, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Overcoming obstacles is synonymous with entrepreneurship. The ability to engage with difficulties and stress in an empowering way is described as the biggest factor for success in life — more significant than your IQ, social networks, physical health, or socio-economic background.

When you encounter stressful situations, there are two basic ways your brain will respond: fight or flight. Whether you fight or flee can be boiled down to how you’ve been conditioned from past experiences. This negative pattern of responses is known as “learned helplessness.” If you’ve given a terrible presentation at a business meeting, you’ll have a stress-induced flight response in similar future scenarios.

To create a pattern of empowering “fight” responses when you encounter a stressful or difficult situation, adjust your explanatory style from pessimistic to optimistic, at three key points: the cause (internal vs. external); the timeframe (stable vs. unstable); and the context (global vs. specific).

If left unchecked, this pattern of “learned” avoidance behaviors will lead to passive and poor decisions. You cannot dominate in entrepreneurship and leadership if you have a pattern of unhealthy risk-averse decisions — always fleeing from challenges.

The good news is, researchers have found that learned helplessness can be short-circuited depending your “explanatory style” or “attribution style.” After encountering a stressful situation, before a passive behavior is “learned,” you first have to interpret the experience, and that interpretation can be changed. Your fight-or-flight respond is visceral, until you learn to stop and ask, “Why?”

These explanatory or attributional styles can be categorized in three ways:

1. Internal vs. external.

This is how you explain the cause of an event, where you attach the “responsibility.” Making it internal means you see yourself as the cause, rather than an external factor. Example: “I’m terrible at giving presentations” (internal), as opposed to “the material was challenging to explain” (external).

2. Stable vs. unstable.

This is how you explain the lifespan an event; whether an experience has permanent effects, or is transient. Example: “I always forget names, I was born with a terrible memory” (stable), as opposed to “I didn’t get enough sleep last night, my memory is a little off this morning” (unstable).

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3. Global vs. specific

This is how you explain the context of an event; whether the situation is universal across all environments or unique to one environment. Example: “I don’t enjoy meeting people at conferences” (global), as opposed to “I didn’t enjoy meeting the people at that last conference” (specific).

What’s the best explanatory style?

Explanatory styles can be divided simply into optimistic and pessimistic. So, a person who responds to challenges with pessimistic attributions will believe they were born “dumb;” that their lack of intelligence is permanent; and will never succeed in any job. This person responds with a “flight-response.”

Reframing the cause, the lifespan, and the context with an optimistic lens means this person believes they were born with great resilience; that their struggles are temporary and change happens over time; and they have the ability to succeed in any career, regardless of past failures. This person responds with a “fight-response.”

These reframing techniques can sound like wishful thinking or making excuses, but researchers have shown this growth-mindset strategy of changing how you interpret an event will change negative response patterns.

To create a pattern of empowering “fight” responses when you encounter a stressful or difficult situation, adjust your explanatory style from pessimistic to optimistic, at three key points: the cause (internal vs. external); the timeframe (stable vs. unstable); and the context (global vs. specific).

December 19, 2015 | Thai Nguyen, Entrepreneur