Send in the Clowns

Potentially everyone is a problem solver. We all have to make decisions about things in our life be they major decisions like the purchase of a car or house, life changing decisions like whether to get married or not, change jobs, or have children, or very simple decisions like should you get out of bed today, OK sometimes that's not a simple decision. But at the end of the day, we really hope that the decisions that we make are the right ones. Unfortunately the Program Manager introduced in this blog on Sept 8th might come across as overly bad or someone with nefarious intentions. That could be true but most likely his behavior could simply be the result of bad decision-making.

It's painful to know we make bad decisions, sometimes very bad decisions, and we tell ourselves if we only knew this, or we only knew that, we would have decided differently. It hurts even more if we are exposed for our incompetence. The point is, whether we know it or not, we have been solving problems and making decisions all our lives. Marketers know that humans in general would rather move through their day making as few choices as possible – for some reason our primordial genetic make-up wishes for us to form habits. It probably has something to do with safety. If I always eat the berries from this tree I will not die, or something like that. But the fewer decisions we are forced to make the more comfortable we are and that is what sales people want us to do. If they get us to choose their product, we don't have to decide again every time. Because of the number of choices we make everyday we have learned to make decisions and evaluate choices almost unconsciously. We seemingly make decisions based on a gut feel but it more likely experience from the past that has crept into our unconsciousness compelling us in a certain direction. Or we consciously choose based on some criteria such as price, but really it's the packaging we just don't know it.

No one is immune from making bad decision, with the possible exception of Warren Buffet.. We've all made bad decisions and it doesn't make us feel very good. The worse our decisions the more we tend to feel like a clown. We don't get up in the morning wishing to make a bad decision in our personal lives and we certainly don't get up hoping to make a bad decision at the work place. We've learned to accept bad decisions in our personal lives but the ones we make in the work place are the ones that can cost us our livelihood so we tend to stay awake and consider more options.

If you happen to work in the government you could be making decisions that affect many more people and although most people have nothing but the best interest of their countrymen in mind, poor decisions are still made. If we give everyone the benefit of the doubt, that they are competent decisions makers, and most likely highly intelligent, why are we awash in seemingly incompetent decisions? This is a very good question and one this short commentary will attempt to answer in time. It's not about the best analytic approach for decision making because there are many. It's not about intelligent people working the problem because there are plenty of competent, well intentioned, and well-educated people thinking about things and placed in positions to make big decisions. It's about being committed to a search for the truth. The title of the entire blog in fact...Truth in Our Profession and how to get there.

This is not some search for higher value or the meaning of life type of truth. It's not a search for a moral correctness in our decision making either. It's about piecing together a puzzle the picture of which we cannot yet see. But wondering enough and being committed enough – for whatever reason – to reveal what is truly in the picture. Commitment to the truth will unlock doors of curiosity and it is through these doors that discovery will occur. Sometimes it will not and you may have to work harder, or you will run out of time and have to do the best you can with what you've got, but you will have done your best and perhaps caught a glimpse of the truth. So then his short paper is about the journey to discovering truth. Striving for and equipped with only a few extra rules in order to make a competent try, elevating the profession for all of us. You may not make it, at the end you may still feel like clown, but it is worth the try if for no other reason then you don't have to sit next to the PM with the big floppy shoes on at the retirement seminar. That clown is already there...let's hope he is not waiting for you.