Transcripts
1. Welcome: hi there and welcome to the course on decision making as part of the multi course Siris on frameworks for high performance. Thank you so much for signing up. My name is Jenna Chang, and I will be your teacher for this course. In the Siris of Courses, you'll be learning tools, methods and frameworks for high performance in many different areas. For this course in particular, we will be talking about how to make sound decisions in career relationships and life. Now let's talk about who this course is for. There are two kinds of people. This classes for first, if you're looking to make better decisions in your professional life, for example, whether you should quit your job and start a business, whether you should go back to school or who to hire at an existing company. Second, this course is also appropriate. If you're looking to make better decisions in your personal life, for example, you might be thinking about whether to get more serious with a romantic partner or which city to relocate to. These are all the types of decisions we will be talking about in this course. Now, before we get into the details Let's talk a little bit about why you should listen to me on this topic. A few years ago, I didn't know how to make good decisions, and this resulted in losing out on many professional and social opportunities. For example, one of my biggest regrets at work was turning down a speaking engagement at Harvard University. Everything was set up for success. It was on a topic I knew well. I had a year to prepare, and it would have been great for my credibility to have said that I had spoken at Harvard University. However, the problem was that I was so scared that I made the terrible decision to turn it down. My poor decision making led to losing out on professional and social opportunities. Now, fortunately, I'm a huge, huge nerd. I read 50 to 100 books per year, and the result of that nerd ing out is that I've been able to develop a set of mental frameworks for making better decisions. Let's fast forward. A few years from the time that I turned down the Harvard speaking engagement, I had done some research on decision making, and as it turns out, I was fortunate enough to be offered a dream job at a company I was dying toe work for. The funny thing is, this dream job was made available to me on Lee after I had made a series of calculator risks six months in advance leading up to the opportunity. Now imagine yourself sending an email to a business idol that you look up to to work with him, only to be rejected by him two days later and then moving to the country in which the company was hiring, all without a guarantee of the job. In the end, this is exactly what I did before being offered my dream job six months later, these choices led to opportunities that I wouldn't have imagined were possible at that point, all because a series of calculated risk in the beginning. But this is not about me. This is about how you can use the same decision framework that I used to do and be more than ever before. How this will work is your class project will be a series of exercises to do as you fall along in the course. These exercises are made so that you couldn't immediately apply the lessons learnt to your own life. I hope you find them useful. And I'm looking forward to seeing your class projects.
2. Intro to the Framework: hi there, and welcome back. We will be covering the decision making framework that you've been using and also the first exercise for the course. So to get started, I want you to think about 2 to 3 decisions that you'll be making in the next 6 to 12 months . Whether it be in your career. Maybe you're thinking about moving to a new job or new industry switching roles. Or on the personal side, maybe you're thinking about moving to a new city or thinking about whether you should continue dating this person, that you've been seeing decisions like that. So take a moment to think about 2 to 3 decisions you want to make, maybe pauses video if you need Teoh before moving on to the next section of this video. Okay, so you have your decisions in front of you. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the decision making Fremer that we will be using. But first, let's take a step back and think about how you would normally make these decisions or how you have made decisions in the past of this magnitude. Did you write a pros and cons list? Did you make a spreadsheet. Did you talk to your friends and family and mentor ists? Or did you console above or the Internet for more information? These are all really common methods and quite helpful for us to use, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. The problem is, we may end up using all these different Memphis, and when it comes to actually making a choice, we go with their gut. So we don't know if it's the right choice for us if we end up going with their gut anyway. Yet so to address this problem, there's been a friend were developed by the offers chip and then he amazing authors. They've done a lot of research on other fields, like marketing and psychology, and now they've come in and compiled all research on cognitive science and also the decisions made by Fortune 500 C. Those politicians, entrepreneurs and anyone else in a position to make many decisions on a daily basis. Now what they found Waas that there's a commonality in how all these people make decisions . How the best decision makers make their choices is through a framework of steps called rock . They might not do it consciously, they might do it naturally, refined that it's how they normally think. But it boils down to a four step process called rap, and that stands for Why didn't your options reality test your assumptions? A 10 emotional distance and prepared to be wrong. We will go into detail on each of the steps as the course moves on. See you in the next video.
3. Step 1: Widen Your Options: in this video, we will cover the first step to making a sound decision. Why didn't your options? What does it mean? Toe white In our options, have you noticed that in most of our decisions, it's usually a matter off? Do I do this or do I not do this? Do I go to business school or do I not go to business school? So I hire this person or do I not? Do I date this person or do I not? That is basically giving room for only two options and therefore very narrow in scope for this exercise. I want you to rephrase the question that you asked yourself so that you give yourself more than two options. The ideal number, according to the research, is toe have 3 to 5 options to choose from. This way, you're more likely to choose a good option. For example, if you are trying to decide between staying in your job or going to business school, maybe the rephrase question is, how do I want to spend the next two years in my career and then business school, and staying at your job are two options that fall under this question. But at the same time, other options that you haven't considered before may surface as a result. Or if you are thinking about moving to a new city instead of asking yourself, Should I moved to this city or not? Maybe the refrains question is pared away. Want to live in the next three years of my life? These airways, you can widen your options for this exercise. Just pick one of your 2 to 3 decisions from the previous exercise. Now, before we move on. Ah, quick note. Don't make five options. Just toe have many. Sometimes there are false options that you create for yourself. Just toe have many options to choose from. So do a gut check with yourself and ask. Are there any options in this list that I would never choose no matter what, cross it off your list, because that is a false option. So to summarize, for whitening your options first reframed the question. Come up with options, check if there are any false options and eliminate hm and try to end up with between 3 to 5 options in the end. And that is white. Ending your options. Take a moment to think about this, and we'll move on to the next step
4. Step 2: Reality Test Assumptions: in this video, we will be doing the second step for making sound decisions, and that is reality testing our assumptions. Sometimes we make a decision. We end up regretting later because we make them with false assumptions about what our choice will involve. For example, some of my good friends from college went on to becoming investment bankers. They thought they would really love their jobs because they would be working in this downtown area and also earning a six figure salary. What they didn't expect was just how many hours were really required and how little sleep they would beginning. So in this case, they were making decisions based off of false assumptions about what the job wouldn't tell . This is, of course, not to say that investment banking as a job is a port career decision for everyone. It's just that in this case, they didn't know what they were getting into. So this exercise is about finding and eliminating any dangerous assumptions associated with the choices for our decisions. There are two ways we can reality test our assumptions. The first way is to do a trial run. This means try out the smallest version of the decision. For example, if you are hiring a new employee at your company, consider investing a little bit of money up front so that you can hire hot three candidates for one month each. There's some things that cannot be known until you actually do a trial run, and in this case, it's working with the employees that you're about to hire. This trial run technique has saved thousands of dollars for companies who have used it. If you're thinking of moving to a new city, consider living in the city for 1 to 2 months before signing a one year lease. If you are considering becoming an investor, think about investing maybe $1000 before investing a $1,000,000. Try the smallest version off your decision. If you can't do a trial run for practical reasons, then you could do a second method for reality testing, which is to ask an expert. An expert in this context is just someone who has been in your situation before or has experience with one of the options you're presented with. Ideally, your expert would also have experience with more than one option so that they could provide insight and comparison between two or more options that you're considering. Once you have an expert to speak with as some things that will uncover any assumptions that you may have about your decision, for example, you can ask, Is this city a nice place, or is it actually just hyped up? Is this job as fun as it sounds, or is it spreadsheets all day? How did you confront this problem when you were faced with it yourself? What were you not expecting when you made this decision for this exercise? Think about how you will reality test your assumptions for your decision. First, think about what are the most dangerous assumptions associated with this decision. One of the things that you know with almost 100% certainty are true. And which aspects are you less certain about? You're going to want to test the latter type of assumptions and for those think about how you will test out each assumption. Take a moment to think about this, and I'll see you in the next video
5. Step 3: Attain Emotional Distance: in this video, we will cover the third step in making sound decisions, attaining emotional distance. Now, why should we attain emotional distance before we make a decision? It's because sometimes we might get caught up in some motions in the short term that prevent us from making the best decision for ourselves in the long term. For example, one time I was offered a speaking engagement at Harvard University. But because I was so afraid of public speaking, I turned it down. And that was a very emotional decision because in the short term I imagine all the pain of preparing for the talk and standing in front of hundreds of PhDs and doctors and telling them about my ideas. And I imagine when criticizing me in their heads. And that emotion crowded out the wisdom of the long term that it would have been very smart decision for my career and also better for my personal growth. If I had just went forward with it, nothing bad would have happened. But the emotions were getting in the way of making the right decision so you don't want the same thing happening to you. And so for this exercise their two questions to ask yourself. The first question is, Imagine you're CEO of your life and tomorrow you have another person coming into your life and they take over your body. They have the same goals and dreams. They have the same skills and experiences as you dio. The only thing they don't have is the emotional baggage. What would they do in your place as CEO of your life? How would they make that decision for you? The second question to ask yourself is, How would you feel about each choice that you make in the next 10 days? And then how would you feel about it in 10 months? And finally, how would you feel about it in 10 years about the same decision? How would your emotions change over time? For example, in the case of public speaking in 10 days of saying yes to the engagement, I would feel very, very nervous, like Oh my God, what did I get myself into? But in 10 months, the event would be over and I would be happy to have given the talk, and in 10 years I would be reaping the benefits in my career and life as a result of saying yes to this engagement. So I want you to take a moment to write down your answers for these two questions. How would a CEO of your life make the decision? And second, how would you feel in 10 days, 10 months and 10 years after you make each decision? Take a moment to think about that and I'll see you in the next video?
6. Step 4: Prepare to be Wrong: the final step for making sound decisions. Prepare yourself for all contingencies. The problem with most decisions is that we go around making decisions left and right, and five years down the road, we might look back and ask ourselves why we made that decision in the first place. But we made that horrible decision, and now we have to live with it. We never have a chance to evaluate whether it was a good decision or not, though there are three steps to prevent us from regretting decisions we make in the past. The first step is to set a trip wire sitting. A trip wire would be putting on your calendar three months, six months or a year from now, when you're going to evaluate the decision you make today so that you can correct course as you go. And then you could think Okay, was this a smart decision? Did I move to the right city? Did I hire the right person for the job? Did I move in with the right partner? Did you choose the right option? So the first step is the set a time in the future to evaluate the decision you make today. The second step is Imagine what you would do in the worst case scenario. As Mohammed Ali always says, everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face. So what are you going to do when you get verbally punched in the face? What if it turns out not to be what you expected if you quit your job and start a business and then the business false? What are you going to work at Starbucks to get back on your feet? Go back to your old job, Work for a friend. What are you going to do? And finally make sure you plan for the best case scenario. An interesting story about this is when a computer programmer decided to code up an app and Sharon on a popular Internet forum. The result was devastating despite the fact that many people really like the website. The problem Waas. When he posted it on the website, he wasn't expecting that millions of people would swarm his website and crash the servers making the website go down. In that scenario, he lost out on an opportunity to capture millions of users for his app. So you want to be prepared for the best case scenario and take advantage of it now. This part will be more relevant for some decisions than others. For example, if you're going on a vacation, the chances are the stakes aren't that high. You're not going to have a completely unexpected best case scenario come out of your vacation. But who knows? You might be offered an amazing job while you're on vacation, and then you have to think about how you're going to prepare for that. So you want to prepare for the best case scenario. What is the best case going to look like? And what are you going to do today to make sure you take full advantage of that? So for this last exercise, take a moment to write down three things. The trip wire date at which you will evaluate your decision, the contingency plan for the best case scenario and the action plan to make sure you take advantage of the best case scenario. If it happens, take a moment to think about these three things, and we'll wrap up in the conclusion and resource is section of this module
7. Conclusion & Resources: We just covered the four steps for making a sound decision. Widen your options reality, test your assumptions, attain emotional distance and prepare for all contingencies. Rap From the English idiom. It's a wrap. If you want to read Maura about this framework and the research that went in behind it, there's a book called Decisive by Chip and Den Heath. Also, if you're thinking about making a decision related to your career, example, the most common being. Do I want to start a startup or a business? Should I quit my job shy? Not There's a framework I would highly recommend called barbell. 90% 10% by NUS seemed to leave. The author of Black Swan could find the links to both of these. Resource is in the slide included. And finally, if you have any questions or comments about the decision making framework, I love to hear from you via email or the contact information listed on the course. Thank you very much.
Janet Chang, Author, Marketer, Human Performance Engineer
