Most corporate decisions aren't going to meet the test of high validity. But they're going to be way above the low-validity situations that we worry about.
Gary A. KleinIf you are committed to the change, you're going to have to sideline the skeptics, or at least keep them under control. There may be a temptation to move them out but skeptics have a value - flagging weaknesses in the plan. Ideally, you will enlist their critical stance by challenging them to find ways to improve the plan as you go forward.
Gary A. KleinThere needs to be a certain structure to a situation, a certain predictability that allows you to have a basis for the intuition.
Gary A. KleinYou need strategies that help rule things out. That's the opposite of saying, "This is what my gut is telling me; let me gather information to confirm it."
Gary A. KleinIt is instructive to see how organizations pursue their goal of reducing errors and uncertainty. They impose standards, employ checklists, demand that knowledge workers list assumptions for their conclusions and document all sources. These actions either directly interfere with forming insights or create an environment where insights and discoveries are treated with suspicion because they might lead to errors. They signal to knowledge workers that their job is not to make mistakes. Even if they don't make discoveries, no one can blame them as long as they don't make mistakes.
Gary A. KleinThe most valuable insight I have made about how people make decisions is that when they become skilled they don't have to make decisions - choices between options. Instead, they can draw on experience and the patterns they have acquired to recognize what to do, ignoring other options. This is the basis of the Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model my colleagues and I described thirty years ago.
Gary A. Klein