One of Nando's most interesting points - and one that makes this a strange category of motivational speech - is the spontaneity of the survivors' behaviour.
"Brilliant, the universities say. Brilliant decisions," Nando tells us. But he emphasises that they were barely decisions at all, more like instinct.
Instructing the slowest member of the three-team party that went for help to return to the crash site wasn't based on a theory of management, and didn't emerge from a process. It was simply the decision they made, and it was the right one.
I can't help thinking - if it's not a bit odd to compare the work of a comfortable New York intellectual to extremes of experience like this - there's a bit of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink in this.
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2 comments:
If you have to make a decision this means you have insufficient information (or insufficient time to analyse the information you have got)
In a world where you have perfect information - you wouldn't have to make any decisions as the correct course of action would be evident.
i.e. I wouldn't worry about improving a management's decision making process - but I would look to improve their information collection and analysis methodology.
When you are in survival mode the number factors are minimal - hence you are almost in a world of perfect information - hence instinctive decisions are possible. I haven't been in a survival situation (yet) but I have trained for one
I think that's a great way of putting it Alex, and Nando actually said something similar - can't remember the exact words, but I think it was "When there are no more options, there is only one option."
If whoever does your info collection and analytics can reduce your decisions to that extent, they're worth their weight in gold... :)
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