How Do You Decide If You Are Going To Read This Post?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title:  Why So Many People Can’t Make Decisions

Competency: decision making

Who benefits: all of us

Consultant Usage: can be useful in understanding clients and self

What’s it about? Some of us live in a world of Black and White.  For us making decisions are easy.  Some of us live in a world with many layers of gray.  For us decision making is difficult.  For instance, some of you immediately hit the link and started reading this.  Some of you (well, you will never know I was writing about you) immediately hit the delete button and never opened the link.  Then there are those of you who decided to wait until later to open this … or not.

Much of this recent Wall Street Journal science article focuses on ambivalence.  Those who live primarily in a shade-of-gray world have high ambivalence according to what the researchers quoted in this article say.  The researchers seem to have a high ambivalence to high ambivalence, saying it is good in some situations, not so much in others.  If you are still with me, you probably have at least some tolerance for ambiguity!

Fortunately, the article offers a wide open window for escape, should the reader decide that he or she does not fit neatly into either category.  As I thought about the article in terms of myself, I could see some “black/white” and some “shades of gray”.  Now don’t go getting’ Holier-Than-Thou on me and suggest that the mere fact that I can see both sides automatically makes me “shades of gray.”

No so.  It is just that areas of certainty (as defined by me) I am black/white.  I know how I feel.  No ambiguity.  I know who I trust.  No ambiguity.  What I have major ambivalence about are those things out of my sight or control.  Unlike popular radio talk show hosts, I don’t have the answers to the World’s problems.  I don’t know what are the best fiscal policies.  I actually have a high degree of ambivalence in what quality asphalt to use in street repairs.

What’s the bottom line here?  Well, it is a well written article that is easy to read.  It offers two interesting lists of characteristics, one for the b/ws and one for the s-o-gs.  It also offers a short quiz “How you see the World” to determine your “shade”. 

I liked the whole thing.  It is just that I didn’t seem to fit in anywhere, or rather, I seemed to fit everywhere.  Oh well, there is always next week.

Catch you later.
[tags]decision making, decision-making, deciding, black/white, shades of gray, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.