We Aren't Mr. Spock
Image by Benjamin Balazs from Pixabay
The thing about giving advice is that it’s super easy to do at a distance. You can look at the options in a cold and calculated fashion, weigh up the pros and cons, and make definite judgements about the right path forward.
We see this firsthand in any education forum - specifically, business schools like those I studied at - where the case method is utilized. You study a specific situation, whether it’s related to people, strategy, operations, etc. You analyze the variables based on the information available. And then you make a logical, rational decision on what it takes to solve the specific problem at hand. Easy stuff.
Except, of course, it isn’t.
The reality is that the path to the “right” decision isn’t always cold, impartial and unemotional. How we think about a problem is influenced by our experiences, our worldview, our ambitions, and so much more. Which is why two equally educated, intelligent and otherwise logical individuals may come to two radically different solutions to the same problem.
I saw this during case discussions at business school, particularly between classmates with varying levels of work experience. The ones who had more work experience tended (in general) to bring out deeper nuances in the discussion, having lived through or experienced some variation of the situation in a past life. The ones with lesser work experience didn’t have the same context but were able to look objectively, cast out emotion and provide a (relatively) unbiased perspective on what should/should not be done.
(To be clear, I’m not suggesting that one is absolutely better than the other, though I do have a bias towards experience - if you’ve lived through it, you understand the subtle nuances at play (especially the human ones) better. That said, there is real value in the ‘detached’ perspective, removing emotion and personal bias from the debate as well.)
My point is this: making a decision about something isn’t as easy and efficient as it might seem to the outside observer. There are many more variables at play and that need to be considered than, say, just the economic - in particular, in those situations where people are involved (which, in business, is everywhere). And it’s even more complicated when it’s a decision that impacts us directly. Our personal ambitions, our fears, our goals, our experiences, our desires all play in and can both help as well as cloud our decision making abilities.
The implication, therefore, is two-fold.
We need to be cognizant of the fact that our own perspectives may be coloring our views. We need to try and be clear as clear as possible about how they’re influencing our thinking, as well as to what extent they’re doing so. We need to then assess whether, in the context of the overall goal, this is a net positive or a net negative.
We also need to do our best to remove those variables from consideration so that we can assess what the alternative impact would be, both short term and long term. This is, of course, easier said than done. It’s helpful, then, to seek counsel, an objective point of view, but from a carefully curated set of individuals - individuals who can empathize and inform, but don’t have a vested interest in the outcome of the decision. (If you go ask plant employees if their work can be best done elsewhere, you can rest assured that the feedback you get back will be influenced by their worldview and their personal needs.)
Decision making is never easy, especially when it involves people (ourselves or others) and people issues. The best long term decisions, though, require us to consider these aspects, in some form or fashion, into how and why we make our decisions.
