Post on 12-Jun-2015
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DR. ANDREAS ZEUCH
Intuition, „Nichtwissen“ and Decision-Making
The Essences of Decision-Making
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
The Essences of Decision-Making
‣You can not not decide: Every single perception,
thinking and acting is a decision.
‣ To look in one direction means to exclude other visual data.
‣ To think one thought means to exclude another one.
‣ To act in one way means to exclude another action.
‣ You can dissolve this exclusion only in time: One by one.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
The Nature of Decisions
‣Every decision is made by rationality and intuition.
‣There is no pure rationality nor intuition. You can
imagine these opposite poles as a throttle: It‘s
possible to scroll your style of decision-making in
either one or the other direction. But you will never
reach the final points.
Rationality
Intuition
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
Incomplete Information: Basics
‣Most decisions have to be made on the basis of
incomplete information.
‣Especially in complex systems there is no such thing
like complete information.
‣Paradoxically, the lack of information regarding to the
relevant data you would like to obtain will grow in
knowledge-society.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
Incomplete Information: Less is more
‣The quality of decision-making is unproportional to the
amount of gathered information
‣The ratio of amount of gathered information and
quality of decision-making is a bell-shaped curve: Up
to a certain point it will increase then decrease.
+-
+
Amount of Informationen
Quality
of
Decis
ion
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
Consequences I: Professional Intuition
‣ Therefore and because of the following aspects it‘s no
luxury but necessity to develop the professional intuition of
your employees.
‣ Intuition is a basic function of every human being. It‘s
rooted in implicit knowledge, subliminal perception and
information processing and mirror neurons.
‣But: Intuition is ressource and risk!
‣ Experience and perception can lead to errors (e.g. Anchor-Heuristic)
‣ Judgements can be distorted by the „Halo- and Devil-Effect“:
Deducing an overall assessment from one single attribute.
‣ For this reasons it‘s important to learn to distinct between functional
and dysfunctional intuition
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
The Meaning of the Term „Nichtwissen“
Nichtwissen is the German term for "absence of
knowledge", including conscious and unconscious
aspects of not-knowing. In contrary to ignorance it does
not automatically feature not wanting to know, which
could be seen as a special subtype of "Nichtwissen".
Errors and misconceptions are other contributing
subtypes of "Nichtwissen".
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
Consequences II: Constructive Culture of Nichtwissen
‣ It‘s important to develop a constructive culture of
„Nichtwissen“
‣Because of the growing daily lack of information.
‣Because every knowledge produces new Nichtwissen.
Remember your time at the university: After having written
your thesis you know, what you‘re not knowing (Important
distinction: conscious and unconscious Nichtwissen!)
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
Consequences II: Constructive Culture of Nichtwissen
‣Nichtwissen is not a problem only. It‘s a deep ressource for creativity and innovation, too.
‣ Become „Open Experts“: Work hard on your expertise and respect it but stay flexible to look with beginner‘s eyes on your questions, problems and challenges.
‣ Respect the question. Every good answer is rooted in a better question!
‣ Anchor intelligent methods of communication like Dialogue-Rounds, Open Space as regular and permanent learning cycles in your organization.
‣ Learn from your errors. There is no error-free organization (even if Fredmund Malik demands it...). Errors will happen. They‘re not intended. Otherwise it would be sabotage.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
Consequences III: The organizational model
‣Every hierarchical, central command-and-control
Organization will kill the intuition of its employees. There is
no space for a constructive culture of Nichtwissen.
‣ To create an ideal context for the described necessary
decision-making culture the Beyond-Budgeting model is a
great choice.
‣And on the other side: Beyond-Budgeting claims intuitive
employees and leaders, and a constructive culture of
Nichtwissen.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009
Learn more:
http://www.a-zeuch.de/index.php?l=en