Perspective is the difference between good decisions and bad decisions.

It is our faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship. It includes our ability to rationalise, to see through and to solve problems,and is the driving force behind our entire decision making process.

How developed is yours?

Psychological studies show that our ability to form perspective is in fact not that developed at all. Experiments demonstrate that introducing only a few factors considerably weakens our decision making abilities.

This means that simple computer programmes outperform their human competition across various selection processes.You could even argue that this flaw in our grey matter and has been directly responsible for much human suffering, including wars, disasters and our current environmental mess.

So how can we learn to combat our weak perspective and in turn improve our decision making ability?

Here are some pointers:

  • Commit all the factors to paper.
  • Give each individual factor a rating.
  • Look for evidence both for and against.
  • Pay particular attention to evidence against.
  • Get the opinions of others.
  • Seek out people who will actively disagree and listen to them.
  • Realise final decisions are dangerous decisions.
  • Once a decision has been made, continue to look for evidence and evaluate.
  • Realise that good decision making often means going back on decisions.

Published by Niall Devitt, Btb Business Training