Before You Decide: 3 Steps To Better Decision Making | Matthew Confer | TEDxOakLawn

five dollars and a class on entrepreneurship the class was at Stanford University and the students were presented with a challenge the instructor split the group of students into teams and then handed each team an envelope with five dollars of seed funding for their brand-new operation they had one task turn the five dollars into the most money possible in a short timeframe the final part of this exercise came early the next week when each team was required to present to the rest of the students highlighting what they had done and the amount of money they had

generated I'm sure you were all now strategizing in your head what would you do if given the same choice and I'm guessing you're wondering well what did the winning team do would it surprise you to find out that the winning team didn't even use the five dollars so what did they do well they sold the rights to that presentation to the rest of the class to a company in town that was more than happy to pay them for the privilege of pitching a group of brilliant Stanford students with the aim of recruiting them to join

their organization upon graduation the winning team spent the short amount of time they had maximizing the real opportunity they had the presentation which required challenging the constraints of the exercise in this case that five dollars in the envelope constraints prevent innovative ideas from ever developing step number one if you want to excel at decision making oh we start by challenging the constraints I find the decision making process fascinating I run the strategy team inability we're a leadership development company based in Austin Texas that places people in team-based competitive business simulations to mimic the decisions they

make in the real world to better prepare them for the challenges ahead in the past three years alone over 20,000 professionals in over 30 countries have participated in one of our simulations we get to work with some of the most innovative companies on the planet and we get to witness firsthand what truly exceptional decision-making looks like the three steps I present today are distilled from those observations and they focus on what to do before you decide it doesn't matter if you're a professional on the precipice of a critical choice or a parent in the midst

of a conundrum considering the path to take with your child or student deciding what school to attend or what major to pursue we all make thousands of decisions each day and we are all striving for an edge I started with that Stanford story because it highlights something that I see time and time again in our simulation too many teams jump right into solving a problem and they accept all the constraints we present them with if you want to excel at decision-making begin by considering what barriers are holding you back start there and see what is

possible step number one challenge the constraints to introduce the second step I want to share something that probably won't surprise you one of the most impactful periods during our simulation is actually after the experience is over when people and teams reflect on what went right and what went wrong we do this often in life and we call this exercise a post mortem because we wait until the event has concluded here's what our time with leaders around the world has taught us take this post mortem approach and flip it around embrace a pre-mortem consider what failure

would look like before you ever go down a path it's human nature to strategize a prep and approach and then formulate all of the ways that you will be successful don't get me wrong it is great to envision your success and you really should only pursue decisions that you believe will have a positive outcome however I've watched professionals strategize Grandia plans of the many ways they will triumph in our simulation but many times all of that energy comes at the expense of spending any time brainstorming how they might fail and the many ways they might

fail so now let me tell you a story about snakes the British government and a striking example of where a pre-mortem could have averted a decision-making disaster during the era of colonialization in India the British government was concerned about the number of venomous Cobra snakes in Delhi after countless failed ideas the government decided to offer a cash bounty for every dead Cobra initially this was an extremely successful approach as a number of snakes were killed for this new reward here's the problem imaginative individuals started to breed Cobras explicitly for the income they can now generate

it didn't take long the government became aware of this and they quickly scrapped the reward program for dead Cobras however this led the Cobra breeders to set their now worthless snakes free the wild Cobra population became even worse than it was initially the apparent solution for the problem made the situation even worse this is now unsurprisingly referred to as the Cobra effect it is also a perfect illustration of the power of a pre-mortem before we decide we choose most often to imagine what success will look like and then for some reason we wait until the

experience is over and go over with a fine-tooth comb and conduct a forensic post-mortem invest the time upfront contemplating how an idea you are considering could end in failure step number two embrace a pre-mortem to introduce the third step I want to share a story from 1999 about a NASA mission to study the climate of the planet Mars after almost 10 months of travel and a build cost of over a hundred and twenty five million dollars the Mars climate orbiter spacecraft burned and broke into pieces due to a navigational mistake the fascinating thing about this

failure was that it was entirely preventable there were multiple teams working on the project one of the teams used the metric system in their calculation another team provided crucial data using inches feet and pounds some of the smartest people on the planet legitimate rocket scientists forgot to check that both teams were using the same unit of measurement and the consequences were catastrophic thus far I've stood on this stage and I've told you that your first step should be to challenge the constraints to allow you to think big then I told you that most of us

are predisposed to contemplate success and instead you need to balance that and contemplate failure those first two steps allow you the capacity to think outside that proverbial box we hear so much about but the third step is vital and it's often overlooked never forget to check the basics I have watched senior leaders of Fortune 500 companies concoct truly impressive strategic plans in our simulation with multiple levels of complexity in an effort to win the game but many times they let small details prove to be their downfall during one of our simulations completely unbeknownst to the

participants at the onset of the game over the course of the experience we're going to challenge them with unforeseen external events these events range from unexpected product recalls to social media PR disasters all the way to natural disasters like hurricanes that put their virtual employees at risk many times though it is actually the more simple tasks of bringing a product to market that trip a team up the steps required to bring a product to market actually don't change throughout the course of our game and they're pretty basic but once we introduce intense adverse events and

the clock continues to tick down teams then struggle to complete those basic tasks step number three before you decide check the basics never let the minut details be the downfall of the decision on your doorstep we started with $5 ingenuity at Stanford and then we talked about cobra snakes in India and then we talked about spacecrafts destined for Mars three stories that highlight three steps to effective decision-making I want to finish with a story about January 15th 2009 when an aircraft with 150 people on board took off from New York City destined for Charlotte North

Carolina three minutes after takeoff an ordinary flight became anything but the pilot would later remark that he heard terrible noises the likes of which he had never heard before and it felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his world what changed the plane had struck a flock of Canadian geese causing both engines to shut down it was at that point that Sully Sullenberger took control from his copilot and radioed a mayday call I don't know if I can highlight any example of challenging the constraints more than the following exchange between Sullenberger and air

traffic control he had previously considered returning to LaGuardia Airport then he considered nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey before receiving the following message quote which runway would you like captain sullenberger's responds we're gonna be in the Hudson the response from air traffic control I'm sorry say again after the event Sully would say that given the fact that they were in New York City one of the most densely populated places on the planet it was actually the Hudson River although an extreme option that represented the best chance for a safe outcome so he challenged the constraints

and readied for a water landing at that point his Prima began he actually believed that he could land his plane intact in the river but what he did next was contemplate how long his aircraft would float and given that it was January he considered the feasibility of a water rescue given the freezing temperatures after walking through different scenarios of success and contemplating different scenarios of failure he moved forward on his decision-making path as the aircraft approached the river he had his copilot shout out airspeed and altitude to confirm the critical basic details that ended up

leading to all 150 people on board surviving after the landing and during the water rescue there was actually one final check to be done captain Sullenberger walked the length of the flooded aircraft twice to ensure that no passengers remained on board before he finally exited the plane each day we are presented with thousands of decisions it is my greatest hope that you never faced anything as perilous as what Sully faced that cold January day but no matter the gravity of the decision you face before you decide first challenge the constraints to allow you to think

big and think different next embrace a pre-mortem to mitigate for potential mistakes and better formulate the correct course of action and conclude by checking the basics to ensure that small details don't prevent you from accomplishing amazing things thank you all so much for your time [Music] [Applause]