Heart and Mind: Mastering the Art of Decision Making by Anderson Barry & Hahn Dan & Teuscher Ursina

Author:Anderson, Barry & Hahn, Dan & Teuscher, Ursina [Anderson, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-04-28T21:00:00+00:00

Ask yourself: "Who would be likely to disagree?"

Experimental research investigating the effects of different conflict resolution techniques on the decision performance of groups suggest that the Devil’s Advocate principle leads to superior group decisions. Groups who used the devil’s advocacy developed and considered more alternative solutions to a case problem and selected higher quality recommendations than those who used expert-based procedures (Valacich & Schwenk, 1995). A metaanalysis of 17 experiments confirms that assigning a Devil’s Advocate improves decision making over expert-based approaches. Further the results are best when the Devil’s Advocate merely questions the assumptions on which favored alternatives are based and refrains from actually becoming an advocate for a competing alternative (Schwenk, 1990).

The Giant Fighter’s Stratagem. In a children’s story, a boy found himself having to defeat two giants. He accomplished this seemingly impossible task by arranging for the giants to fight, and defeat, each other. The elegant feature of the giant fighter’s stratagem is that it uses intelligence to redirect the superior force of others to one’s own advantage. In applying this stratagem to decision making, we use the knowledge and thought of experts to help us structure our decision problem.

Let’s say you’re trying to decide on a car. Car A appears, on balance, to be the best; however, Car B also has some very attractive features. You go to the person who is selling Car B, give your reasons for preferring Car A, and ask him or her to talk us out of our preference. If the person selling Car B manages to do a good job convincing you that their car is preferable to Car A, then head over to the person selling Car A and repeat the process. It is amazing how often this stratagem can, in the end, get the person selling the inferior product to admit that, at least for your purposes, the competitor’s product is superior. This admission alone can give you a great deal of confidence in your choice.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.