product leadership

  • Articles
  • About me
  • Language Menu
    • English
    • Deutsch

A blog about mastering product management

Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?

Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?

29. March 2015 By Timm Richter

This is an interview the McKinsey Quarterly did with Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein in 2010. The insights are still valid today.

The interviewers were surprised by the commonalities of both scientists whom they view to have opposing schools of thought. Well, it shouldn’t come as such a surprise since Kahneman and Klein seem to share some underlying guiding principles:

  • Take a humble approach to decision making, accepting that in many situations there is no right answer.
  • Understand that decision making heavily depends on the context, i.e. whether it is a high or low validity environment
  • Use adaptive thinking. Be as aware as possible about the decision making process.
  • Have tolerance for challenge. Even be curious about other people’s different point of view.

They also agree that executives are good in showing confidence. In fact, this is what everybody expects from them. Yet their biggest risk is being overconfident – see also the article from Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic.

In the interview, I find two pieces of practical advice most valuable:

First, do a premortem for important projects. That is, assume for a moment that an upcoming project will fail. Ask everybody for the reasons they believe the project would have failed. This helps to identify the greatest risk associated with project. Those risk have to be tackled first.

I also like the advice of Daniel Kahneman to let everybody write down his opinion before starting a decision making process. In this way you can avoid that in a meeting the group’s decision making gravitates prematurely to a solution.

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/strategy/strategic_decisions_when_can_you_trust_your_gut

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email

Filed Under: Featured, Food for thought from the outside

Categories

  • Featured (5)
  • Food for thought from the outside (40)
  • Own thoughts (34)
  • Product management news (38)
  • XING experiences (2)

Timm Richter

Blog via E-Mail abonnieren

Gib Deine E-Mail-Adresse an, um diesen Blog zu abonnieren und Benachrichtigungen über neue Beiträge via E-Mail zu erhalten.

Join 47 other subscribers

RSS Feed

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

Follow news feed about product management on XING

Impressum

Copyright © 2023 · Minimum Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.