Dear all,

on my way back from a wonderful ‘semi-private’ chamber concert with artists from Vienna’s Bach Consort (thank you again, Jürgen, for the invite!), I am thinking about some of the ensuing conversations over canapés and wine.

(Lack of) Speed in digital transformation seems a recurring topic among many of us ‘industry insiders’. Why are our decision making processes often so slow?

Ever since the early work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahnemann in the early 1970s, we know that human decision-making is far from ‘rational’ and ‘facts driven’. Today we understand an astounding list of cognitive biases (this one corroborated by Tomer Hochma).

How can we still decide effectively and quickly?

Jeff Bezos and former US Secretary of State Colin Powell are reported to be particularly effective decision makers.

One of Bezos’ key insights seems to be triaging which decisions are reversible from the ones which may alter the course irreversibly – and applying different procedures accordingly. This article from Inc. Magazine details some of his thinking.

Setting thresholds for how much information is required to make sensible decisions is a key insight of Colin Powell’s, trying to avoiding the ‘analysis paralysis’ that often bogs down our decision making.

A more elaborate decision making framework – that I personally find very useful – is David Snowden’s Cynefin Framework, described in this HBR article .

Whichever heuristic you will apply to decide on your weekend reads, enjoy!

I’ll be off to another concert tonite – Southern Tyrolian Folk-Jazz musician Herbert Pixner.

Cheers,

Godehard