Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Paul Enfield on how you have to take risks, to get the rewards. I’ve worked with Paul for many years at Microsoft, and he was one of my early mentors. I’ve learned a lot of life wisdom from him, and I thought this particular nugget was especially useful. It’s about taking a leap of faith.

The big idea is that for so many things in life, there is no way to be 100% certain before we act. We have to take risks. We can spend all our time trying to make things certain, know the unknowables, and wait for the perfect conditions, or we can dive in a little more.  We can do more big things and act on more windows of opportunity.  This is the heart of bold action.

Without further ado, here’s Paul on the leap of faith …

Some life decisions we face can seem colossal. Some seem so large that we can get stuck attempting to reach our decision and fail to ever act. I found myself in one of these situations when I came upon a revelation that empowered me make my decision.

Quite a while back, I was faced with a decision on whether or not to propose to my wife. While pondering the decision, I realized that no matter how much I thought about it, I would never be 100% sure that I was making the right choice. It was at that time that I also realized this correlated to a concept I had learned in college Statistics class called “degree of certainty.”

In a simplistic form, degree of certainty indicates how likely it is that the decision is the correct one. You can be fairly sure of your choice, and therefore have a high degree of certainty.

I also realized that different people will need to achieve different degrees of certainty before they will act upon their decisions. However, the commonality would always be that you can never achieve 100% certainty on your decision. Therefore we are always faced with a “gap” we must jump to reach 100% certainty. I chose to name this gap the “leap of faith.”

I was 90% sure I should make this decision to propose, but was forced to realize that I must make this leap of faith if I were ever to make my decision.

Being armed with this truth is empowering. Once you realize you must be willing to take a chance no matter what your decision, you can move forward and evaluate other factors.  Other factors might include what is the opportunity cost for not making the choice. IOTW, what will I lose if I fail to act?  Also, what is the benefit I can obtain by making the choice?

Empower yourself to make tough decisions. Recognize your personal needs to support your decision and when you reach your threshold, jump. Make your decision and take your leap of faith.

Photo by Hunterrrr.

“Never try to solve all the problems at once — make them line up for you one-by-one.” — Richard Sloma

How well can you solve your problems?  Solving problems is one of the most fundamental skills in life, and it’s something we get to practice every day.

I learned early on that wishing away problems didn’t work and that it was more effective to embrace challenges as a part of life, as a chance to grow and expand myself.  One of my favorite sayings is, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

Unfortunately, we don’t always get taught the best ways to solve our problems.  Some of the less effective ways include anger, blame, avoidance, curling up into a little ball, etc.  The good news is, you can improve your problem solving skills by using problem solving techniques.

One of the most effective problem solving techniques to add to your problem solving skills cache is the Osborne-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process, or CPS for short.  It’s strength lies in casting a wide net over the problem, and testing multiple paths and possibilities before locking in on a particular solution.

In the book, Creatively Ever After: A Path to Innovation , Alicia Arnold writes about how you can use the Creative Problem Solving Process to tackle your challenges in work and in life.  It’s about getting science and structure on your side, while unleashing your creative powers to solve the tough stuff.

The Creative Problem Solving Process
According to Alicia, you can think of the Creative Problem Solving Process in six main steps:

• Step 1. Identify the Goal, Wish, or Challenge.
• Step 2. Gather Data.
• Step 3. Clarify the Problem.
• Step 4. Generate Ideas.
• Step 5. Develop Solutions.
• Step 6. Plan for Action.

While the process may look simple and obvious, the key is to compare it to your current approach:

• Do you know your goal?  (Can you state it in one line?)
• Have you gathered any data and sorted facts, opinions, and fiction?
• Do you have true clarity of the problem you are solving?  (Can you state the problem as a simple question, such as, “How to ….”?)
• Do you generate multiple ideas or just run with the first thing that pops in your head?  Do you look across the ways other people have solved this problem before, and find the patterns?
• Do sketch out solutions and possibilities and test for fit or do you dive into the details?
• Do you turn your ideas and solutions into actionable steps?  Do you break the steps down into mini-goals that you can test and get feedback?

While a lot of problems can be solved by jumping to conclusions and drawing from experience, many of the problems we face cannot.  Whether you’re solving a health problem or changing the game at work, a process like the Creative Problem Solving Process can help you tap into your creative potential.  Better yet, with a process like the Creative Problem Solving Process, you can harness and leverage the collective brain power of multiple people in a coordinated way.

My Related Posts

• Solving Problems with Skill
• 4 Types of Problems
• What’s the Challenge?

Photo by Alaskan Dude.

There is something amazingly powerful about taking decisive action.  It’s like flipping a switch and deciding it will be so.  It’s a completely different experience than waffling or wading through the jungle of indecision.

I was talking through the power of decisive action with one of my mentors, when they shared a quote with me.  The quote expresses the power of bold decisions in an articulate way.  It goes like this:

“Until one is committed, there is a hesitancy, the chance to draw back; always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man would have dreamed would come his way.
I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.’”

The quote is from W.H. Murray, in The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 1951.

What bold decision might invent new possibilities in your life?

Photo by Nina Matthews Photography.

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”– Napoleon Bonaparte

If you have five minutes to think about something, you actually have a lot.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking to make a lot of progress.  You can spend five minutes on a problem and actually cover a lot of ground more effectively.  That is, if you have a framework.

At Microsoft, I end up with a lot of short blocks of time, whether it’s in between meetings or in between tasks.  It’s easy to fall in the trap of, “I don’t have enough time to think about that.”  Well, the reality is, it’s actually very effective to use short time blocks to both train your thinking while solving your problems, rather than let them pile up.

The key is to use Five-Minute Thinks.  Five-Minute thinks are an effective time-management technique for your mind.  A Five-Minute Think is simply a structured approach to thinking that focuses your thinking and helps you identify the goal, explore options, narrow down, and then conclude.  Using a Five-Minute Think helps you avoid locking onto one idea too quickly, falling into analysis-paralysis, and over-engineering.  By casting a wide net, exploring a topic, and then narrowing down potential paths, you can naturally use your thinking skills very effectively.  You can also “chip away at the stone” of larger problems with these little time blocks.

In the book De Bono’s Thinking Course, Revised Edition , Edward De Bono shares the idea and approach of Five-Minute Thinks.

The Five-Minute Think
The framework for the Five-Minute Think is simple.  According to De Bono, to do a Five-Minute Think:

1. One minute: Target and Task
2. Two minutes: Expand and Explore
3. Three minutes: Contract and Conclude

That’s it!

Don’t spend more than five minutes or you’re defeating the purpose.  What you might do is use another Five-Minute Think on another aspect of the problem, but don’t turn Five-Minute Thinks into 10, 20, or 30 minute thinks.  By limiting your time, you’re telling your mind to focus and fully engage for a short-burst.  You’ll improve with practice.

One Minute — Target and Task
The outcome of your one-minute should be the target and the goal defined precisely, such as “Identify ways to improve my blogging speed.”  In other words,  — what do you want to accomplish with your Five-Minute Think?

At this step, you define the target and the task precisely.  The target is your focus of the thinking.  The target can be as general or as tight as you want.  The task is setting the goal – it’s the thinking task you’ll do.  For example, you might set the goal of reviewing something to improve it.  You might set the goal of finding problems.  You might make the task a creative exercise, such as “How else could I …” or “How could xyz be made more useful?”

Two Minutes – Expand and Explore
I think of it as elaborating on the problem, making a mental map, and exploring options and ideas.

In this part of the phase, you open up.  Don’t be critical or judging.  Just start flowing what you know and any ideas that come to mind.   You can scan your experience, analyze the situation, or look for familiar patterns.

Keep it positive and free-flowing.  According to De Bono, you’re “opening up the field, filling in the map, exploring the territory.”

Three Minutes – Contract and Conclude
This is where you spiral down on the problem.   Try to make sense of what you’ve got and get to a definite conclusion.  According to De Bono, this might be a “solution, creative idea, additional alternative, or an opinion.”

The next time you have five minutes to think about something, test your ability to define, expand, explore, and contract on the problem.  Simply directing your thinking will improve it over time.

Photo by BTO Educational.

How to decide among a lot of options? … You can improve your decision making by adding criteria and weight.  This helps you prioritize effectively.  The key is making the criteria explicit.

This is effective for personal decision making, and it’s especially effective for group decision making.   It works well for personal decision making because it forces you to get clarity on your own criteria.  It works well for group decision making because you create a shared set of criteria.  When people know what’s valued, it’s easier to understand and weigh in on the decisions.

It’s also a good way to find out mismatches on expectations.  For example, if one person thinks the color of the room is the most important, but another thinks the size of the room is more important, you can have a conversation around the usage scenarios and trade-offs and share perspectives.  The other beauty of using criteria and weight is that it helps make the issue less subjective, so you can have a less defensive, and more objective evaluation of the options.

To make this easier to follow, I walk through an example to illustrate the approach.

Summary of Steps
If you need to make an important decision, the following steps can help:

• Step 1.   Identify the criteria
• Step 2.   Rate the criteria.
• Step 3.   Rate your options against the criteria and multiply by the weightings

Step 1. Identify the Criteria
In this step, identify the key factors that matter.  For example, when I was giving input on hiring our new leader, I identified the following criteria:

• Microsoft Experience
• patterns & practices Experience
• Attract the right talent
• Execution
• Customer-connection
• Engineering Competence
• Business Competence
• Political Competence

I knew ultimately it was not a linear decision, and that it’s about satisfying the various skills for the job (the business perspective, the technical perspective, the political perspective, the customer perspective … etc), but I thought that if I shared the frame for how I was thinking of the new leader, it might help make a better decision, avoid simple pitfalls and create a more objective frame for discussion, dialogue, or debate.
Step 2. Rate the Criteria
The next step is to identify the weighting of each criteria.  This is where you start to get clarity on what really matters.  I find that that sticking to a scale of 1-3 helps keep it simple.  In this case, 1 is less important and 3 is more important, since we will multiply by these numbers in the next step.

Step 3. Rate Your Options Against the Criteria and Multiply by the Weightings
In this step, you rate your options against the criteria, and then multiply by the weightings:

When you score against your criteria, you can have an objective discussion around the criteria.  This helps especially when everybody may be on different pages.  For example, in my experience, political competence varies by situation.
The 5 rating for political competence I gave across the board is actually interesting.  It’s far easier to get a 1 for political competence than anything past a 5  given the mix of “task-focus” and “people-focus” among our melting pot of disciplines, cultures, engineering focus, product mentality, and company maturity level.  Really, political competence is a matter of situation and networks — where some networks are better than others.  The good news is that most political competence challenges can be addressed with grooming and tuning (I see it every day.)  Other people certainly have different views and experience on political competence, so this was a good backdrop for the conversation.

Multiply by the Weightings
Here is the result of multiplying the candidate scores against the weightings.

For example, Candidate A is gets an 18 in Microsoft Experience (9 x 2, where 9 is the candidate’s score and 2 is the weighting of the criteria).  As you can see, the numbers helped highlight some key differences between the candidates.   It’s not so much that you can your decisions into numbers, since it’s rarely that black and white, instead, it’s really that you expose your thinking, get clarity on your values, and have more meaningful dialogues.

My Related Posts

• What is the Relevant Decision Making Criteria?
• Consult-and-Decide and Build-Consensus for Making Decisions
• 5 Elements of an Effective Decision Making Process
• 4 Decision Making Methods
• Boundary Conditions for Effective Decisions

Photo by purplbutrfly.

“Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.” – Tony Robbins

You can make more effective decisions when you know what the key elements are.  When you make important decisions, there are a few key factors to keep in mind.

For example, you should rationalize and understand the problem itself.  You need to know the problem you’re solving.  You should also set boundary conditions for the solution.  Success is often a spectrum so you should set boundaries so that you don’t limit yourself to something that’s impractical or something that’s impossible.

Your decisions should be action-oriented.  If you can’t act on your decisions, then it’s a waste of time.  You should also be able to respond to feedback once you implement your decision.  What looks good on paper or sounds good, may not work when you actually test it.

In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management (Collins Business Essentials) , Peter Drucker outlines 5 elements of an effective decision making process.

5 Elements of an Effective Decision Making Process
According to Drucker these are the 5 elements of an effective decision making process:

• Element 1. Problem rationalization.
• Element 2. Boundary conditions.
• Element 3. The right thing to do.
• Element 4. Action.
• Element 5. Feedback.

Here’s a quick explanation of the 5 elements of effective decision making:

• Element 1.  Problem rationalization.  The clear rationalization that the problem was generic and could only be solved through a decision that establishes a rule or a principle.  Know the problem your solving.  See Opinions Over Facts for Effective Decision Making,  4 Types of Problems, and What is Relevant Decision Making Criteria.
• Element 2. Boundary conditions.  The definition of the specifications that the answer to the problem has to satisfy, that is, of the “boundary conditions.”  Know your range of options that will still count as success.  See Boundary Conditions for Effective Decisions and
• Element 3. The Right Thing to Do.  Before you decide what’s feasible, first figure out what the right thing to do is.  See First Figure Out What the Right Thing to Do Is.
• Element 4. Action.  Turn decisions into action.  See Action Commitments.
• Eelement 5. Feedback.  Get feedback on what’s working and what’s not.  See Test Your Decisions Against Reality.

I found an interesting article about contextual decision making.  It’s “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” by David J. Snowden and Mary E.. Boone, an article in Harvard Business Review.  The idea is about tailoring your decision making approach based on the context.  You can use the Cynefin Framework to figure out which context you’re operating in, so you can choose the most effective response.  The five contexts are simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder.  The key is to determine whether to categorize, analyze, probe or act.

Context’s Characteristics
Based on Snowden and Boone, the following table summarizes the five context types in the Cynefin Framework:

Fact-based Management
According to Snowden and Boone, simple and complicated are part of the ordered world.  How to respond as a leader in simple and complicated scenarios:

• Simple - (The Domain of Best Practices) – Sense, categorize, respond; Ensure proper processes are in place; Delegate; Use best practices; Communicate in clear, direct ways; Understand that extensive interactive communication may not be necessary.
• Complicated - (The Domain of Experts)  – Sense, analyze, respond; Create panels of experts; Listen to conflicting advice.

Pattern-based Leadership
According to Snowden and Boone, complex and chaotic are part of the unordered world.  How to respond as a leader in complex and chaotic scenarios:

• Complex - (The Domain of Emergence) – Probe, sense, respond;  Create environments and experiments that allow patterns to emerge.  Increase levels of interaction and communication.  Use methods that can help generate ideas; Open up discussion: set barriers; stimulate attractors; encourage dissent and diversity; and manage starting conditions and monitor for emergence.
• Chaotic - (The Domain of Rapid Response) – Act, sense, respond;  Look for what works instead of seeking right answers; Take immediate action to reestablish order (command and control); Provide clear, direct communication.

My Related Posts

• Situational Leadership II
• 5 Practices and 10 Commitments for Leadership
• Management is Doing Things Right, Leadership is Doing the Right Things
• The Top 10 Leadership Lessons

If you need to be persuasive, you need to know this secret.  It’s how people who influence without authority improve their effectiveness.  The secret is … character trumps emotion trumps logic.  If you win the heart, the mind follows.  On the other hand, if you win the mind, the heart doesn’t always follow.  For an example of character, think about the impact of the right people in the room asking the right questions. 

When you know this secret, it all makes sense.  You didn’t need more data to make your point.  You needed a moving story.  When you walk into the room, it’s not what you say or how you say it … people will go with whatever Frodo says, so you better have him on your side.  In Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion , Jay Heinrichs writes about arguments by logos, ethos, and pathos. I’ve highlighted some relevant points from Thank You for Arguing.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Character trumps emotion trumps logic.  Don’t just go for the logical win, build rapport.  Remember the golden rule of “rapport before influence.”        
• Win the heart, the mind follows.   If their hearts not in it, that’s a problem.  Something is telling them that something is off.  You need to know the concerns.  It could be anything from fear to a lack of trust.   One thing that helps is simply to ask, “what’s the concern.”
• Read the situation.  This is crucial and there’s two parts.  First, know the culture and what’s valued.  You could be in a situation where logic is the highest value.  This is more common in engineering organizations.  You might be in a situation where emotions have a higher value.  Second, know who needs to be on board.  Social proof and character are powerful.
• Have the right people on your side.   if you win the pillars first, it’s a domino effect.
• Win the brain, gut and heart.  It’s the full-meal deal.  It’s hard for somebody to really follow when they aren’t fully bought in.  Their mind says one thing, but their heart says another.  They want to believe you but they have this funny feeling inside that says something’s off.  Congruence is a key to effectiveness.  A good test is how well they tell your story without you.
• Know the emotional triggers.   How does your audience feel about the topic?  Throwing data at them won’t help if you don’t leverage your empathic listening skills and feel their pain or feel their fears.  Build a bridge.
• Leverage metaphors.   The right picture can make all the difference.   Is it a bear of a problem or blue skies ahead? 
• Know their convincer strategy.  Do you know what your audience responds to?  Some people like facts and figures.  Some need to hear something multiple times.  Some people believe it when they see it.  The more you know their convincer strategy, the more effective you will be.

Logos, Ethos, Pathos
According to Heinrichs, Aristotle had a Big Three:

• Logos – argument by logic
• Ethos – argument by character
• Pathos – argument by emotion

Argument by Logic (Logos)
Logos is argument by logic.  Heinrichs writes:

Logos is argument by logic.  If arguments were children, logos would be the brainy one, the big sister who gets top grades in high school. It doesn’t just follow the logical rules; instead, its techniques use what the audience itself is thinking.

Argument by Character (Ethos)
Ethos is argument by character.  Heinrichs writes:

Ethos, or argument by character, employ’s the persuader’s personality, reputation, and ability to look trustworthy.  (While logos sweats over its GPA, ethos gets elected class president.)  In rhetoric, a sterling reputation is more than just good; it’s persuasive.  I taught my children that lying isn’t just wrong, it’s unpersuasive.  An audience is more likely to believe a trustworthy persuader, and to accept his argument.  “A person’s life persuades better than his word,” said one of Artistotle’s contemporaries.  This remains true today.  Rhetoric shows how to shine a flattering light on your life.

Argument by Emotion (Pathos)
Pathos is argument by emotion.  Heinrichs writes:

Then you have pathos, or argument by emotion, the sibling of the others disrespect, but who gets away with everything.  Logicians and language snobs hate pathos, but Aristotle himself – the man who invented logic – recognized its usefulness.  You can persuade someone logically, but as we saw in the last chapter, getting him out of his chair to act on it takes something more combustible.

Brain, Gut, and Heart
What’s your gut say?  What’s your heart say?  What’s your mind telling you?  Heinrichs writes:

Logos, ethos, and pathos appeal to the brain, gut, and heart of your audience.  While our brain tries to sort the facts, our gut tells us whether we can trust the other person, and our heart makes us want to do something about it.  They form the essence of effective persuasion.

Your Opponent’s Logic and Your Audience’s Emotion
You can play off logic, but remember to keep the emotional connection and trust.  Heinrichs writes:

Logos, pathos, and ethos usually work together to win an argument, debates with argumentative seven-year-olds excepted.  By using your opponent’s logic and your audience’s emotion, you can win over your audience with greater ease.  You make them happy to let you control the argument.

Questions for Comments

• What are the keys to character that makes somebody influential?
• How can you use your mind, body, and heart to make more effective decisions?

My Related Posts

• Framing Compelling Arguments
• 7 Meta-Programs for Understanding People
• Cooperative Controversy Over Competitive Controversy
• Refuse the Sucker’s Choice

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Don’t use command when you need consensus.  Don’t use command for important decisions that need buy in.  Consensus would be more appropriate.
• Use consult to make efficient, informed decisions.  Use consult to gain ideas and support without bogging down decision making.
• Use vote if efficiency is the most important factor.  Use vote for efficiency and when everyone agrees to support the outcome of the vote.
• Use consensus when you need everybody’s buy in.  Use consensus when you need everybody to support an important decision.

4 Methods of Decision Making
According to Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler, there’s four common ways of making decisions:

• Command – decisions are made with no involvement.
• Consult – invite input from others.
• Vote – discuss options and then call for a vote.
• Consensus – talk until everyone agrees to one decision.

Command
According to Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler, command is when there’s no involvement:

Let’s start with decisions that are made with no involvement whatsoever.  This happens in one of two ways.  Either outside forces place demands on us (demands that leave us no wiggle room), or we turn decisions over to others and then follow their lead.  We don’t care enough to be involved – let someone else do the work.

Consult
According to Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler, consult is when you ask for input:

Consulting is a process whereby decision makers invite others to influence them before they make their choice.  You can consult with experts, a representative population, or even everyone who wants to offer an opinion.  Consulting can be an efficient way of gaining ideas and support without bogging down the decision making process.  At least not too much.  Wise leaders, parents, and even couples frequently make decisions in this way.  They gather ideas, evaluate options, make a choice, and then inform the broader population.

Vote
Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler, suggest only using a vote when team members agree to support whatever decision is made:

Voting is best suited to situations where efficiency is the highest value – and you’re selecting from a number of good options.  Members of the team realize they may not get their first choice, but frankly they don’t want to waste time talking the issue to death.  They may discuss options for a while and then call for a vote.  When facing several decent options, voting is a great time saver but should never be used when team members don’t agree to support whatever decision is made.  In these cases, consensus is required.

Consensus
Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler, suggest using consensus when there’s high stakes or you need everyone to fully support the final decision:

This method can be both a great blessing and a frustrating curse.  Consensus means that you talk until everyone honestly agrees to one decision.  This method can produce tremendous unity and high-quality decisions.  If misapplied, it can also be a horrible waste of time.  It should only be used with (1) high-stakes and complex issues or (2) issues where everyone absolutely must support the final choice.

How To Choose Which Decision Method to Use
Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler, outline how to choose which decision making method to use:

1. Who cares?  Determine who genuinely wants to be involved in the decision along with those who will be affected.  These are your candidates for involvement.  Don’t involve people who don’t care.
2. Who knows?  Identify who has the expertise you need to make the best decision.  Encourage these people to take part.  Try not to involve people who contribute to new information.
3. Who must agree?  Think of those whose cooperation you might need in the form of authority of influence in any decisions you might make.  It’s better to involve these people than to surprise them and then suffer their open resistance.
4. How many people is it worth involving?  Your goal should be to involve the fewest number of people while still considering the quality of the decision along with the support that people will give it.  Ask: “Do we have enough people to make a good choice?  Will others have to be involved to gain their commitment?”

My Related Posts

• Consult-and-Decide and Build-Consensus for Making Decisions
• Develop Disagreement Rather Than Consensus
• What Is Relevant Decision Making Criteria
• Opinions Over Facts for Effective Decision Making
• First Know What’s Right for Effective Decision Making
• How Experts Make Decisions
• Satisficing to Get Things Done

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Don’t make a decision unless there’s disagreement.   Find the concerns.  Before you make a decision, first find the concerns.
• Disagreement provides alternatives.  Disagreement provides alternatives, stimulates the imagination, and helps you break out of preconceived notions.
• Understand the alternatives.   Know the implications and impact of the alternatives.
• Know why people disagree.  People might disagree for good reasons.  Find out why.
• Know both sides of the issue.  Don’t just know one side of the story.  Take the time to know both sides.

Don’t Make a Decision Unless There’s Disagreement
Drucker writes that you should not make a decision unless you’ve considered alternatives:

Unless one has considered alternatives, one has a closed mind.  This above all, explains why effective decision-makers deliberately disregard the second major command of the textbooks on decision-making and create dissension and disagreement, rather than consensus.  Decisions of the kind the executive has to make are not made well by acclamation.  They are made well only if based on the clash of conflicting views, the dialogue between different points of view, the choice between different judgments.  The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.

The Right Decision Demands Adequate Disagreements
If you don’t have disagreement, then you’re not ready for a decision.  You don’t fully understand the problem.  Drucker writes:

Alfred P. Sloan is reported to have said at a meeting of one of his top committees, “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.”  Everyone around the table nodded assent.  “Then,”continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”  Sloan was anything but an “intuitive” decision-maker.  He always emphasized the need to test opinions against facts and the need to make absolutely sure that one did not start out with the conclusion and then look for the facts that would support it.  But he knew that the right decision demands adequate disagreements.

3 Reasons for Insisting on Disagreement
Disagreement can help you avoid preconceived notions, find new alternatives, and stimulate the imagination.  Drucker writes:

There are three main reasons for the insistence on disagreement.  It is, first, the only safeguard against the decision-maker’s becoming the prisoner of the organization.  Everybody always wants something from the decision-maker.  Everybody is a special pleader, trying – often in perfectly good faith – to obtain the decision he favors.  This is true whether the decision-maker is the president of the United States or the most junior engineer working on a design modification.  The only way to break out of the prison of special pleading and preconceived notions is to make sure of argued, documented, thought-through disagreements.

Second, disagreement alone can provide alternatives to a decision.  And a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw, no matter how carefully thought through it might be.  There is always a high possibility that the decision will prove wrong – either because it was wrong to begin with or because a change in circumstances makes it wrong.  If one has thought through alternatives during the decision-making process, one has something to fall back on, something that has already been thought through, that has been studied.  Without such an alternative, one is likely to flounder dismally when reality proves a decision to be inoperative.

Above all, disagreement is needed to stimulate the imagination.  One does not, to be sure, need imagination to find the right solution to a problem.  But then this is of value only in mathematics.  In all matters of true uncertainty such as the executive deals with, whether his sphere is political, economic, social, or military – one needs “creative” solutions that create a new situation.  And this means that one needs imagination – a new and different way of perceiving and understanding.

Commit to Find Out Why People Disagree
Don’t just disagree, find out why there’s disagreement.  Knowing why people disagree helps you cut through the fog.  Drucker writes:

The effective decision-maker, therefore, organizes disagreement.  This protects him against being taken in by the plausible but false or incomplete.  It gives him the alternatives so that he can choose and make a decision, but also so that he is not lost in the fog when his decision proves deficient or wrong in execution.  And it forces the imagination – his own and that of his associates.  Disagreement converts the plausible into the right and the right into the good decision.  The effective decision-maker does not start out with the assumption that one proposed course of action is right and that all others must be wrong.  Nor does he start out with the assumption, I am right and he is wrong.  He starts out with the commitment to find out why people disagree.

First Understand the Alternatives
Drucker writes that you need to understand the alternatives:

Effective people know, of course, that there are fools around and that there are mischief-makers.  But they do no assume that the man who disagrees with what they themselves see as clear and obvious is, therefore, either a fool or a knave.  They know that unless prove otherwise, the dissenter has to be assumed to be reasonably intelligent and reasonably fair-minded.  Therefore, it has to be assumed that he has reaches his so obviously wrong conclusion because he sees a different reality and is concerned with a different problem.  The effective person, therefore, always asks, What does this fellow have to see if his position were, after all, tenable, rational, intelligent?  The effective person is concerned first with understanding.  Only then does he even think about who is right and who is wrong.

Lawyers Know Both Sides
Drucker writes that to make the most effective decisions, you need to understand both sides of the issue:

In a good law office, the beginner, fresh out of law school, is first assigned to drafting the strongest possible case for the other lawyer’s client.  This is not only the intelligent thing to do before one sits down to work out the case for one’s own client.  (One has to assume, after all, that the opposition’s lawyer knows his business, too.)  It is also the right training for a young lawyer.  It trains him not to start with, “I know why my case is right,” but with thinking through what it is that the other side must know, see, or take as probable to believe that it has a case at all.  It tells him to see the two cases as alternatives.  And only then is he likely to understand what his own case is all about.  Only then can he make out a strong case in court that his alternative is to be preferred over that of the other side.

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