Expertise in Decision Making
Your life right now is the summation of all your decisions. Your business right now is the summation of all the business decisions made by the executive officers or other decision makers. The take away here is that decisions are the reason why you are in your present situation. Maybe it was someone else’s decisions. The point is that decisions are an integral part of determining your life’s direction so it is paramount to optimize your decision making process to maximize your life, investments and business.
I received my Master of Business Administration & Decision and Information Sciences Degrees! I studied in the accelerated Decision and Information Sciences Program at the University of Florida and graduated with Honors. Then, a few years later, I received my MBA from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I am also an alumna of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government Executive Education program, LEADERSHIP DECISION MAKING.
What is Decision and Information Sciences? A multidisciplinary approach to creative problem solving combining information sciences, technology and business. Optimization in executive decision making.
From studying executive decision making processes and their optimization in college and then proceeding to being an entrepreneur and always in the executive seat with my life experiences, many would consider me a decision making expert and catalyst. The process of decision making can be optimized and streamlined and I will be your catalyst to help you optimize your decision making.
I am not here to make decisions for you rather show you how I make expertise-based intuitive decisions based on my tacit knowledge from a culmination of my experiences, knowledge, education. These expertise-based intuitive decisions are rooted in having extensive tacit & implicit knowledge gained from experience so they automatically recognize patterns within that specific activity or field. Tacit knowledge is comprised of pattern recognition and matching, and situations are synthesized based on recognizable prototypes in your head. Therefore, most of my decisions as CEO or any other executive officer have become rather quick based on my automaticity. The patterns are recognized almost unconsciously so we seem to have an “inner” wisdom on what to do within a given domain. The situations almost always differ but the process is similar. Therefore, running a business is like riding a bike. Then serial entrepreneurship can actually be seen as getting easier each time.
Qualities for Optimizing Decision Making:
Flexibility
Perceptiveness
Reducing Length of Feedback Loop
Divide and Conquer
Effective Communication Skills
Self Confidence
Creativity Under Stress & Chaos
Minimizing Options
Self-Imposed Time Limitation
Sometimes “Good Enough” can be Best
Self-Awareness
Practice is effective in performing better decisions, however, it is not a precursor to expertise in decision making. Therefore, there is no guarantee of making better decisions but it does improve the odds of making better decisions.
Another important point of intuition is to make sure you separate it from emotion. We do not want our emotions making the decision. There are constructive ways of distinguishing between them. Use your intuition not your emotions.
Key components of expertise in decision making (expertise based intuition which is rooted in tacit knowledge):
Large, developed tacit & implicit knowledge base from vast experiences in those fields
Mental models of pattern recognition and matching used to perceive meaningful patterns in the environment quickly
Collective experiences are given meaning and applied to new experiences to make sense and process more rapidly ie fast learning in similar domains or field like serial entrepreneurship repeating similar processes
Quick assessments of situations and problems for effective and efficient solution finding ie advantageous in an entrepreneurial environment.
Automaticity which allows decisions made with greater ease utilizing less cognitive resources ie innate or natural decision making
Effectively identify leverage points mentally in order to come up with creative solutions before trial and error. It is like a mental simulation because you have experienced this in some pattern before. Your brain is able to manipulate it before allocating time and resources to a trial and error for solution finding. Instead you mentally evaluate the potential of the solution.
How to work on developing Tacit & Implicit Knowledge which leads to expertise based intuition necessary for expertise in decision making in a field:
Deliberate and guided practice and experiences.
Repetition of similar tasks with immediate feedback that guides performance improvements – as entrepreneur and trader/investor I received those “feedbacks” rather quickly especially when I made mistakes!
These similar repeated tasks keep building upon your preexisting knowledge constantly updating and improved “that knowledge file” in your mind.
You must remain engaged and motivated to excel. An internal drive and need for maximum performance like a relentless obsession to master it.
The deliberative process must involve conscious monitoring and self-assessments of performance processes including self regulation of the environmental and behavioral and internal cognitive processes.
Feedback, feedback, feedback! Probably one of the most important criteria to gain expertise. You want “constructive criticism” or feedback because your sole goal is to master it. Feedback is essential for effective learning. It isn’t about being right or your ego rather it is about becoming your best. The best version of you!
Objective targets or goal are necessary to track your progress and stay focused. Develop your task strategies and use these performance goals on attaining the long term goals to help with developing implicit and tacit knowledge.
Intuition is derived from your tacit knowledge garnered from your experiences. You can just “feel” what to do and how to do it. There is a lot of research on the differences in explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge and I will not go into detail here on all of them as it is beyond the scope of this discussion. With tacit knowledge the pattern matching becomes innate. It is fascinating.
I have been a CEO of many different businesses for many years. I make decisions daily. All day long. Making decisions is second nature to me. My role is delegation and executing with decision making at the center.
Can tacit knowledge be shared? Not so easily. It is nearly impossible to communicate and must be constructed from practice. If you want to become better at something then look for ways to expand the set of recognizable prototypes in your head. So essentially it is ideal to seek out the “best” role models or mentors and “copy” them instead of asking “how”. It is difficult to explain so follow the motions until you embody a set of your own. Your own rhythm so your brain can construct the tacit models necessary for peak performance, decision making and success.
My hope is that my synthesized unique approach can guide you with creating your own way for success.
Research: Dr Gary Klein, Professor Ericsson
