How do you decide?

We make thousands of decisions every day – some big, some small. 

What we do have some control over, what we can improve, is the quality of our decisions.

Any decision is, in essence, a prediction about the future. Making a decision is making a guess about how things might turn out.

Your decisions will only be as good as your ability to anticipate how they might turn out. 

You can rarely guarantee a good outcome (or a bad one). The goal is to try to choose the option that will lead to the most favorable range of outcomes.

Good outcomes can result from both good and bad decisions, and bad outcomes can result from both good and bad decisions.

  • Step 1, for each option under consideration, identify the reasonable set of possible outcomes.
  • Step 2, identify your preferences using the payoff for each outcome – to what degree do you like or dislike each outcome, given your goals and values? If an outcome moves you toward a goal, the payoff is positive. If an outcome moves you away from a goal, the payoff is negative.
  • Step 3, estimate the likelihood of each outcome unfolding. You know enough to make an educated guess. All your knowledge, imperfect as it might be, means that your guess isn't random. The willingness to guess is essential to improving decisions.
  • Step 4, assess the relative likelihood of outcomes you like and dislike for the options under consideration. With the possible outcomes, payoffs and probabilities, you can now see how the upside compares to the downside, whether the possible gains compensates for the downside.

These four steps force you to assess what you know, and seek out what you don't.

Increasing accuracy costs time. Saving time costs accuracy.

The challenge for any decision-maker is that you want to accomplish two things at once: You don't want to waste too much time and you don't want to sacrifice too much accuracy. The key to balancing the trade-off between time and accuracy is figuring out the penalty for not getting the decision exactly right.

If your goal is to get certainty about your choice, you will be stuck in analysis paralysis and never be finished. Pretty much every decision is made with incomplete information.

One of the best tools for improving your decision-making is to get other people's perspectives.

When asking for input or advice, don't offer your opinion first. When you tell someone what you think before hearing what they think, you can cause their opinion to bend toward yours, oftentimes without them knowing it. Provide what the person needs to know to give worthwhile feedback – and nothing more.

The goal of good decision-making can't be that every single decision will work out well. That's an impossible goal. Embracing that fact is necessary for becoming a better decision-maker. 

Your goal is, across the portfolio of all the decisions that you make in your life, to advance toward your goals rather than retreat away from them.

"How to decide" by Annie Duke

How to change anyone's mind

Everyone has something they want to change, but change is hard. 

People and organizations are guided by conservation of momentum. Inertia. We tend to do what we have always done.

When trying to change minds and overcome such inertia, the tendency is to push. 

We assume that pushing harder will do the trick. That if we just provide more information, more facts, more reasons, more arguments, or just add a little more force, people will change. Unfortunately, that approach often backfires. People and system pushes back.

Rather than thinking about what you could do to try to create change, ask yourself why things haven't changed already. What’s stopping people? What are the parking brakes?

Stop trying to persuade and instead get people to persuade themselves. Let them choose how they get where you are hoping they will go. People like to feel they have control over their choices and actions.

Start by understanding. Ask, don't tell.

Before people will change, they have to be willing to listen. They have to trust the person they are communicating with.

If you want to truly understand something, try to change it. You can also reverse it. To truly change something, you need to understand it.

Change is also hard because we tend to overvalue what we already have or already are doing.

We compare things to our current state. The status quo. To get people to change, the advantages can't be just a little better; it has to be a lot better. Research suggests that the potential gains of doing something have to be 2.6 times larger than the potential losses to get people to take action. 

You need to surface the cost of inaction. You must make it easier for people to see the difference between what they are doing now and what they could be doing.

People think that, when changing minds, someone has to lose. 

Two chefs needed the last orange in the kitchen for an important dish.  They argued back and forth, but took a big knife and split it half leaving both with only half of what they needed. However, one chef needed the juice for a sauce, and the other needed the peel for a cake.

To change minds, find the root. Discover whatever needs and motivations are driving behavior in the first place. Find the root and the rest will follow.

'The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind' by Jonah Berger.

The five truths about architecture modernization

We need to be brutally honest. Modernizing technology within established businesses is hard. 

According to Thoughtworks almost 75% of organizations that embark on legacy modernization projects fail to complete them.

So what can we do? Here are my key takeaways from the first six chapters of Nick Tune's excellent book "Architecture Modernization
Socio-technical alignment of software, strategy, and structure".

1. You don't modernize for the sake of modernization!

You need to express the true business narrative, the desired business outcomes and understand how architecture modernization can drive it.

Legacy architectures are usually providing some business value, but they are also slow and expensive to change, prone to unreliability and increasingly open to new security compromises. 

The costs of software decay become visible when the costs of repair are high.

2. A modern architecture is a socio-technical architecture!

How we organize people and their interactions will be mirrored in our architecture.

When you start modernizing, don't design the social structure (teams, organization, workspace) and the technical system architecture in isolation.

3. Surprise, there is no quick fix!

Moving from aging to modernized architecture is hard, and it's complex. If this was a quick fix, it wouldn’t be one of the biggest problems companies today face. 

That said, it shouldn’t take years for modernization to start delivering value. 

The architecture is never fixed and will continuously evolve as the context is changing. Don’t treat modernization as a traditional one-off project.

4. Modernization is touching every aspect of your operating model!

Will you modernize with the same operating model, mindset and way of working that caused the garden to overgrow in the first place? Bad idea.

You should embrace deep changes in how you empower cross-functional & value stream aligned product teams, involve the users, break down the business and IT barriers, adjust the funding models and invest in technical quality.

At least if you want to avoid yet another large and expensive modernization initiative in a few years.

5. Modernization is a social activity!

Modernization is a social activity where diverse groups come together and share their knowledge to make as much details and complexity visible.

You must get rid of the traditional mindset of treating “THE BUSINESS” (the customer giving orders) and “IT” (the vendor taking orders) as separate units. They are in fact two sides of the same coin. 

This is not just about rebuilding an old system, it’s also about modernizing the business domain and business processes. It's a joint effort.

What do you think companies must do to succeed with architecture modernizations?

Say Less and Ask More

That's the coaching habit. Coaching is today a commonly used term, but the actual practice of coaching doesn't seem to be occurring that often. And when it does, it doesn't seem to work.

The essence of coaching lies in helping others and unlocking their potential, but we all have a deeply ingrained habit of slipping into the advice-giver/expert/answer-it/solve-it/fix-it mode.

There is still a place for your advice and answer as a leader, you should just try to slow down the rush to it as your default behavior.

A little more asking people questions and a little less telling people what to do. Here are the seven magic questions to ask.

What's on your mind?

An open question that invites people to get to the heart of the matter and share what's most important to them.

And what else?

A question that creates more wisdom, more insights, and more options because the first answer someone gives you is almost always never the only answer, and it's rarely the best answer. When someone says "there is nothing else" you have succeeded.

What's the real challenge here for you?

It's time to focus. When people start talking to you about the challenge at hand, what they are laying out for you is rarely the actual problem. The "for you" pins the question to the person you are talking to.

What do you want?

This one is difficult to answer. We often don't know what we actually want. The illusion that both parties to the conversation know what the other party wants is pervasive, and it sets the stage for plenty of frustrating exchanges.

How can I help?

This question is forcing your colleague to make a direct and clear request. That may be useful because she might not be sure why she started this conversation with you. 

Second, this question stops you from rushing into "rescuer" mode where you offer advice or start to take over responsibilities.

If you are saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?

This question is more complex than it sounds, which accounts for its potential. It puts the spotlight on how to create the space and focus, energy and resources that you'll need to truly do that 'Yes'. 

It's all too easy to shove another 'Yes' into the bag of our overcommitted lives.

What was most useful for you? / What did you find most valuable about this chat?

This one gives you feedback, it will give you guidance on what to do more of next time. It gives your colleague a chance to recall and reflect on key takeaways from the conversation. That's when we start learning.

Drop the "Why?" questions

In a coaching conversation, don't ask the 'Why' questions. You put them on the defensive. Rather than "Why did you do that?", try "What where you hoping for there?" or "What made you choose this course of action?".

And by the way, don't forget to ask the questions with genuine interest and curiosity and acknowledge the answers.

"The Coaching Habit" by Michael Bungay Stanier.

Are some words magic?

Almost everything we do involve words. 

We use words to communicate ideas, express ourselves, and connect with love ones.

Words are how leaders lead, parents parent, teachers teach, and doctors explain.

Some words are more impactful than others. Some words are magic. The right words, used at the right time, can change minds, engage audiences, and drive action.

Rather than asking kids to "help", ask them to be a "helper" instead. You offer an opportunity. An opportunity to claim a desired identity. 

Want people to listen? Ask them to be a listener. Want them to work harder? Encourage them to be a top performer.

Next time you need to solve a complex problem, think about what you could do (rather than should) - the word "could" encourages divergent thinking.

When trying to change the minds of people who disagree with us, we often think that it's best to be direct. We assume that if we just lay out the facts, the other side will come around to our way of thinking. Being too direct can backfire, leading the other person to become even more convinced of their initial opinion.

Instead, showing that we are conflicted or uncertain makes us seem less threatening. It recognizes that issues are complicated or nuanced, which increases receptiveness.

You need to know when to express doubt, and when to express confidence. If you need to express confidence, for instance saying "I think this is the best" conveys more confidence than "This is the best, I think".

Present tense suggests that the speaker don't just have an opinion, they are relatively certain about it. Past tense, like the solution "worked" well, suggests something was true at a particular point in time. 

Present tense, in contrast, suggests that something is more general and enduring. Saying something works well suggests not only that it worked well in the past, but that it continues to work well and will continue to do so in the future.

People who ask more questions are seen as more likable and fun to spend time with. Ask questions that follow up on what was just said because then you demonstrate that you listened, understood and wants to know more.

The more people know about something, the more we assume others know, and we end up communicating in ways hard to understand by using acronyms, abstractness, and other lingo. 

If you want to help people understand an idea, feel heard, or remember what was said, use a concrete language.

If you want people to think your idea has potential, use abstract language. 

Uber could be described as "A smartphone app that makes it easier to get a Taxi, connecting passengers and drivers and reducing wait time". 

Instead, one of the cofounders said "A transportation solution that is convenient, reliable and readily accessible to everyone". 

The potential market seem much larger then, and that's important for investors.

"Magic Words" by Jonah Berger