Have you ever woken up to find a set of new plastic hangers in the center of your driveway?
No? Just me?
The other morning I took the dogs on their morning walk and we encountered hangers: A pristine set of white plastic hangers just resting in the driveway.
I look around, like WTF is going on?
👀
I left the hangers alone. I was in apprehension mode and didn't want to mess with them.
Going to the end of the driveway I noticed mail on the ground in front of the mailbox. It had rained the day before, and the envelopes were soaked.
👀
So, now we’ve got another weird thing. The mail carrier knows mail goes IN the mailbox.
I opened the mailbox and inside was a card from a board game.
I look up the hill from the mailbox and there’s a plastic Walmart bag.
This was our final clue, but unfortunately not enough (for me) to explain what was going on! I really can’t imagine a plausible scenario that explains this series of clues.
What do you think happened?
If you’ve got a theory, I’m all ears! Drop your hypothesis on me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz.
Wishing you a hanger-free week!
Kevin
A Quote
“
Learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative.
— James Clear in "Atomic Habits"
Three Things
1 - 👩🔬 Using AI to Understand Scientific Research - I found this website called Consensus.app where you can ask questions of research papers and get back summaries and links to results. You can ask about economics, business, health, history, supplements, sociology - you name it! I asked it questions about my wellness goals for the year - how to reduce HRV, how to increase VO2Max, how to increase strength - and got really good results.
2 - 🌮 Macro Factor for Food Tracking - In service of my body composition / strength goal, I started using this app to track my food intake and weight. I like the UI and entering food is low friction. It’s got great dashboards, and - in theory - makes adjustments to my programming based on my own metabolism. I’ve already noticed my brain thinking; “If I don’t work out - the app will know.”
3 - 📔 “City of Gold” book on Dubai - Derek Sivers singing the praises of Dubai on a recent podcast made me realize I know very little about Dubai. I picked up this book to change that! I loved learning about the history of the area and how modern Dubai came to be. One criticism is just that the book is out of date now, being written in 2009. For example, there’s a chapter on how deadly the traffic is, but when I looked it up, fatalities had dropped 93% from 2007 to 2023.
Deep Dive on Decision Speed and Quality
Lots of people make decisions unconsciously. They’re not thinking about their thinking. They’re operating on instinct or compliance.
If you care about increasing your odds of success from your decisions, you’ll want to be intentional about your decision making.
Your Goal: High Quality Decisions Made Quickly
What’s the goal of your decision making apparatus? For outcomes to go your way?
Incorrect. ❌
That’s close, but not quite - and I’ll explain why.
Yes, big picture, what you want is for outcomes to go your way. But that’s not really the right goal to set because those outcomes are outside if your control.
You can make a good decision and still get a bad outcome because the world is complex. Think of a decision in sports where the other team thwarts your plan. Or an investor purchasing stock, but later the price drops.
If you judge those decisions by their outcome, then you’d call them bad decisions (and this is often what happens in sports - fans call the coach an idiot AFTER something doesn’t work out).
When you do this type of thinking it’s called “Resulting”: where you think the quality of your decision is related to the outcome of the decision.
“Our tendency to equate the quality of our decision with the outcome is called resulting. Results are the most visible part of a decision. Because of that, we tend to use them as an indicator of the decision’s quality. If the results are what we wanted, we conclude that we made a good decision. If the results aren’t what we wanted, we tend to blame external factors. It’s not that our process was lacking; it’s that a crucial bit of information was. (As opposed to when an acquaintance gets bad results, at which point we assume it’s because they made a bad decision.)”
In most cases outcomes are Probabilistic, not Deterministic - meaning they are the result of a complex world and outcomes can’t be known in advance. There are many possible outcomes of a decision with certain probabilities.
Your goal is a process that gives you the best chance for a positive outcome.
For that, you need two things; quality and speed.
Why do decisions slow down?
When leaders think their environment is merely Complicated instead of Complex, when they think things are Deterministic instead of Probabilistic, and when they engage in Resulting, then all bad outcomes are assumed to be the result of a bad decision.
How do leaders fix bad decisions? They make a series of predictable changes. - Decisions go through the leader. - Involve more people with context into the process. - Get more data!
"Don't worry everyone, I've got this. Bring me charts! Go research more about this decision!"
The net effect of all of this is a slower process. It takes time to find data. It takes time to get the right people. It takes time to do the research.
I’ve seen decisions take MONTHS when they’re made this way.
One reason that’s bad is because it’s expensive. If you’ve got 16 people working 10% of their time for three months that decision can cost $250,000 or more.
Another reason it’s bad is that it often doesn’t increase the chances of success. How many pivots have you seen after a decision was made? That’s because plans make contact with reality and need to adjust anyway.
Don’t slow down the process if it doesn’t improve your chances of success.
Most Decisions Are Reversible
Leaders also forget that decisions are often reversible, so the cost of getting it wrong is typically much lower than all the pre-decision rigamarole.
Let’s say you spend the hypothetical $250K above on getting a decision made. What if the team hits their complex system and needs to make an adjustment a week later? That second decision - to adjust - was much less expensive.
There are two frameworks for how to think about this - you might have heard about one-way doors and two-way doors.
A two-way door is a decision you can walk into, look around, and walk back out if you don’t like it. Easy.
A one-way door only goes one way. Once you walk in, you’re committed. There’s no going back.
“Big companies tend to develop a decision-making process that is designed to manage one-way door decisions, precisely because poor decisions can lead to big problems, even disaster. The process is typically slow, cumbersome, and riddled with risk aversion. This process tends to become the dominant one in large companies, and it is routinely, almost thoughtlessly, applied to two-way door decisions. The result is reduced speed, impaired idea generation, stifled innovation, and longer development cycles.”
In practice I’ve found few decisions are truly one-way doors, so I actually like this next framework that has more nuance. It’s also a little more fun.
Hats, haircuts, and tattoos.
A hat isn’t expensive to change. You put one on, look in the mirror, and change it if you don’t like it. Fast and cheap adjustment.
Haircuts are a little more commitment. Sure, you can change your haircut if you don’t like it, but you might look a little goofy while you wait.
Not a problem. Haircuts can be changed.
Tattoos are a pretty deep investment. Yes, you can put another tattoo over it if you don’t like it, or maybe go through months of laser removal, but there will always be a little evidence the tattoo was there.
And very important, it’s about farming for dissent.
Done poorly, people making decisions go into ego protection mode. They put together some options, start to fall in love with one, and then want to make sure everyone agrees with that option so they can fall asleep feeling smart.
Falling asleep counting cheers.
What you want to do is find people to poke holes in your thinking. - What cognitive biases are you not aware of? - What options have you not thought of? - What risks aren’t being considered? - What assumptions aren’t being stated? - Is there a different synthesis of all the pieces?
“In some cases, an employee proposing an idea will distribute a shared spreadsheet asking people to rate the idea on a scale from –10 to +10, with their explanation and comments. This a great way to get clarity on how intense the dissent is and to begin the debate.”
- Great tactic for farming dissent: Reed Hastings in “No Rules Rules”
These are just a few of the ways to improve quality. Anything that improves the quality of your thinking will improve the quality of the decision.
Quality and Speed Are in Tension
My last point is to remember that speed and quality are typically competing with each other.
You can go faster, but you won’t have as much time for rigorous thinking. You can improve rigor, but that often takes longer.
When you’re tempted to ask for more data, or do more research, or have another debate, ask yourself if the tradeoff is worth it. Will the extra time give me a better decision?
An absence of dissent is never a guarantee that you’re on the right track. Your confidence in a decision should directly correlate with the amount of divergent thinking that went into it.
Keeping in mind that most decisions are reversible, I like Colin Powell’s 40-70 rule:
Former U.S. General Colin Powell’s 40-70 rule is a good guideline. He believes that if you have less than 40 percent of the information, you shouldn’t make a decision. But if you wait until you have more than 70 percent of the information, you’ve waited too long. He says, “Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.”
What decisions do you have going on at work this week? Are you satisfied with the quality and speed?
Are you going through the motions of a process, are are you trying to optimize your chances of success?
Is it a hat, a haircut, or a tattoo? Make sure you’re adjusting appropriately.
Let me know how this works for you! If you have questions about this, or just want to let me know your thoughts, email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz. Hearing from you would be the highlight of my week 😁
