Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions

by Gary Klein

The first pass is to hear a brief version of the story, to see if it has good possibilities, and to prepare ourselves to probe the important parts, and not waste time at the beginning on trivial issues.

The second pass is for the full telling of the story. We try to get the details pinned down to a time line so we can get a better sense of what happened and to visualize when and how long things took.

The third pass is to probe the thought processes. We usually ask what a person noticed when changing an assessment of the situation and what alternate goals might have existed at a certain point.

If a course of action was selected, we ask what other actions were possible, whether the person considered any of them, and if so, what were some factors that favored the option chosen. We like to ask about hypotheticals. For instance, if a piece of information had not arrived, what would the person have most likely done?

If time permits, we make a fourth pass through the incident. At each choice point—whether about interpreting the events or choosing a course of action—we ask if a novice could get confused.

Stories organize events into a meaningful framework.

Stories serve as natural experiments, linking a network of causes to their effects.

Stories are similar to mental simulations; they are evaluated using many...

Stories can be used to extract and communicate subtle asp...

When an action is decomposed into its elements, the chore of coordinating those elements comes at the end. With a metaphor, the overall coordination was the starting point.

In trying to understand how people solve ill-defined problems, one strategy is to try to reach a goal while simultaneously trying to define the goal, using failures to specify the goal more clearly. There is a second strategy: to find an analogy that suggested features of the goal.

By using analogues, we are tapping into the same source of power for stories. We are applying an informal experiment, using a prior case with a known outcome and a semi-known set of causes to make predictions about a new case.

First, we learned that they do not select analogues just based on similarity.

when Chris Brezovic, Marvin Thordsen, and I studied the decision making of new tank platoon leaders, we found that analogical reasoning was about as likely to hurt them as to help them.

Second, we learned that some causal factors are easy to adjust for, and others are not.

Third, we learned that the logic of reasoning by analogy is similar to the logic of an experiment: to draw a conclusion without having to know all of the important factors operating.

Similarly, when we use an analogy, we are trying to set up a condition where the same causal factors are at work, even though we do not know what they are. The analogue is selected to match on the causal variables as closely as possible, and we adjust the data to take into account aspects where we know the matching is inadequate.

There is a delicate balance to using analogues. If we know a great amount, we do not need the analogues; we can just figure out the formulas. If we know very little, analogical reasoning may be as likely to get us into trouble as to help us. Analogical reasoning seems to help most when we are in between: we know something about the area but not enough for a satisfactory analysis.

the logic for making predictions: recall a previous case that had the same dynamics as the current one, identify the strategy used, modify it to meet the current requirements, and carry it out.

Metaphors and analogues direct thinking by framing situation awareness, identifying appropriate goals, and flagging relevant pieces of information.

Analogues provide a structure for making predictions when there are many unknown factors.

Analogues function like experiments, linking interactive sets of...

By taking into account the difference between the analogue and the current case, we can adjust the analog...

Analogical predictions are most helpful when there is a good database but not enough information to ...

Analogues are useful for generating expectancies and ...

There are some people I do not trust, and I do not give them difficult errands.

If we can work with people who understand the culture, the task, and what we are trying to accomplish, then we can trust them to read our minds and fill in unspecified details. A team that has much experience working together can outperform a newly assembled team.

When team members understand the intent and reasoning behind a task, they will be better able to improvise.

They will adjust to the field conditions that the planners cannot know about, by finding ways to jury-rig solutions when the plan starts to run into trouble. They will recognize opportunities no one expected. They should be able to understand the goals well enough to set and revise priorities, to decide when to grasp an opportunity and when to let it go. And if they complete a task before receiving more instructions, they will be able to proceed on to the next task rather than wait.

There are seven types of information that a person could present to help the people receiving the request to understand what to do:

The purpose of the task (the higher-level goals).

The objective of the task (an image of the de...

The sequence of steps in...

The rationale for ...

The key decisions that may have...

Antigoals (unwanted o...

Constraints and other cons...

Colonel Hanan Schwartz of the Israeli Defense Forces has argued that the plan should be left to the discretion of the unit carrying it out. Let them figure out how to achieve the mission. If you do not trust them, get others or do a better job of training. Just do not fall into the trap of choreographing each of their movements.

Colonel Schwartz has suggested that this could also describe known weaknesses in the plan, to help subordinates know the thinking of the planners and recognize when the plan might be breaking down.

The effective commander needs to provide a sufficiently clear picture of the overall mission, including the potential follow-up. This information lets the subordinates make their own decisions about how best to achieve the task and the higherlevel goals.

In Weick’s version, these are five facets: Here’s what I think we face. Here’s what I think we should do. Here’s why. Here’s what we should keep our eye on. Now, talk to me.

First, we infer mental activities from behavior.

Second, we infer mental processes from our own conscious experience.

The matters the team talks about, even the gestures that team members make to each other, are the contents of the team’s consciousness. We can call this the collective consciousness of the team.

Third, we infer mental processes from activities of which a person is not aware—perhaps physiological or electrical events in the brain, or part of the person’s unconscious, to be ferreted out by interpreting dreams and Freudian slips.

Working memory.

Applied to a team mind, information is presented and gets some discussion; then the team moves on to another topic and forgets the first one.

Long-term memory. This ability to store information permanently applies to teams as well as individuals (Wegner, 1987). Teams have to...

If a team member has particular information and drops out of the team, the information is lost. According to Wegner, teams find it helpful to store the information r...

Limited attention. We can attend to only one thing at a time. Teams also can discuss only one thing at a time. They have to be careful in directing their attention to make s...