I. When You're In Charge

  Just as parents and teachers lead and provide for our youth, effective managers lead and provide for their employees or subordinates so that they may lead happier lives. Your employees or subordinates look to you for care and guidance quite analogously as children perceive their parents/guardians/teachers. We all naturally want to trust our authority figures, not fear them.

Our brains appear programmed with predispositions to believe what authority figures tell us. — David L Weiner, Brain Tricks: How to Cope with the Dark Side of Your Brain ... and Win the Ultimate Mind Game, 1993.

  Predominately, your subordinates want to trust and find comfort in your presence ... someone to help them, teach them, guide them, to run to and complain to when things go wrong. Our emotional memories of a distant childhood are automatically projected onto the present professional clan, with you — the manager — as the perceived "parent."

  Prudence dictates that you keep this in mind before uttering something you may subsequently regret. Remember how you argued with your parents? “You said that it was okay to...,” or “...but Mom gave me permission!” Your employees or subordinates will quote you just as readily!

  “Am I considering all the possibilities (past, present, future)? ...every contingency? ...every possible outcome or implication?” should be your thoughts before you utter a single word. "My immediate reaction is..., but that may change once I have time to thoroughly analyze the situation," should be your initial verbal response. You're not in the batter's box; you're in the press box ... voice recorders and note-takers all around, recording/remembering everything you say.

  Remember that there is an exception to every rule ... almost. You should be suspicious of any rule without at least one exception written into it, because it more than likely sanctions or dictates some course of action that ought to be avoided in some particular situation. What happens if ... or in the case of ... ? Remember to make exceptions and discuss variability — however rare or subtle — when you are providing advice. Brainstorm to eliminate all possible irrational consequences that could result from a poorly thought out statement. By doing so, you will avoid plenty of problems later on.

  This is an issue of preparation — preparing for each possible contingency before it happens. Remember that the real world is enormously multidimensional! Estimation and prediction based on trends, tendencies and probabilities of occurrence, however accurate they may be, can help us to process loads of data quickly and effectively, but doing so without recognizing a possibility for error, without taking exception or allowing for the possibility of an exception never hitherto before considered, can lead to a situation of gross — though perhaps rare — negligence, something that every decision maker wants to avoid.

II. Brainstorm To Recognize Your Assumptions

  No matter who you are or what decision you are deciding, you are making some assumptions. Whether you recognize them or not, they are there, lurking in the dark, waiting to surprise or fool you when at last you discover their less than benign presence!

  That may be a bit dramatic, but it clearly drives the point home. We all intuitively make assumptions about Reality and how we expect it to "behave" each minute of each day. Unfortunately, as a lengthy record of all the blunders in human history attest, some of these assumptions that we make of or expectations that we have for the real world surrounding us stay with us each and every day, even when we try to avoid them in our professional decision-making.

  The problem is that Reality doesn't care what we think of it or how we expect it to behave. Reality is a perpetually incorrigible problem child; all we can do is brainstorm and prepare for each possible sudden outburst if we are to avoid suffering any serious repercussions.

  Remember always to prepare for the unexpected, to imagine the not-so-obvious. Think about the young , sick, elderly and handicapped (physically and mentally), the prosperous as well as the disadvantaged, the arrogant as well as the humble, the angry as well as the cheerful ... and even the mourning. But don't stop there ... the hurried as well as the complacent, the honest as well as the dishonest, the drunk as well as the sober. Are you prepared for someone who suddenly has an asthma attack? heart attack? epileptic seizure? etc.

III. Brainstorm to Recognize ALL Possible Variables that May Influence the Situation

  Imagining ALL variables that may possibly influence a particular situation under study is not always as simple as perhaps you may immediately realize.

  Recognize that, unless you actually have some specific first-hand experience stored in memory, your imagination will tend to simplify and idealize things a bit, typically overlooking the many tiny subtleties that could possibly alter the imagined image. Consequently, you will tend to ignore or overlook certain possible variables — however common or rare they may be — if you are unaware of their influence or perhaps even their existence.

  The problem, here, is that your own imagination is not 100% accurate or error-free, but can be limited by your own experiences and creativity. We don't customarily bother throwing in all the extra variability into the initial imagined event. More thought is needed before that subsequently happens.

  Your own competence at holding your particular decision-making position can be put to a strict test here. "Am I familiar with all the knowledge and ongoing research? Do I have access to all the information and/or resources needed to effectively navigate through this situation?" Keeping up-to-date and competent can go a long way toward helping you to imagine that most appropriate course of action needed to successfully and/or most effectively solve the situation at hand. You're only human: ANY shortcomings in your experiences, knowledge or resources ought to be readily revealed to those whom you are serving so that potential problems might be circumvented by either

• consulting others whose knowledge may complement yours, or
• finding someone else who may more competently occupy your position.

  This is where open communication, consulting professionals, extensively researching the matter and seeking the assistance of dedicated others can mean the difference between recognizing that rare, but significant, detail that could seriously hamper your plans or later confronting an embarrassing scenario because you had not recognized its possible significant impact in advance.

IV. Your Own Beliefs and Perceptions

  When we imagine particular events, we sometimes utilize personal beliefs that help us to generalize and simplify the mental work needed to effectively imagine the scenarios. Consequently, certain subtleties are sometimes overlooked or completely ignored due to our — perhaps stubborn — tenacity to cling to those cherished beliefs.

  Belief planning has no place in professional decision-making. Although, certainly, sometimes we may not have the data, means or time necessary to adequately test certain beliefs, we must always consider the consequences involved in assuming their validity in light of the possibility that they may be untrue, however strongly we would perceive or want otherwise.

  Remember that when we fail to recognize the limitations inherent to assuming validity for our personal beliefs, we are setting ourselves up for the possibility of making a decision with perhaps grossly irrational consequence(s). Sometimes, the overlooked factors creep into the planned scenario and devastate all our planning, however good the intentions may have been at the outset. The result, of course, is yet another lesson in humanity's long list of lessons learned through trial-and-error.

  The point is that you should never derive a professional decision from a personal belief without first seeking broader scientific verification of its validity before relying on it as justification for that particular decision. Or, where scientific verification is impossible in the time frame within which you must make your decision, you should always consider the possible consequences involved — however improbable any particular one may seem to be — to your assumption of validity in light of the possibility that it may, in fact, be untrue.

  A similar argument equally holds for all those other misperceptions — verbal, emotional (see Beliefs & Fallacies) — you may have of the world around you. Recognize that your own perceptions of Reality are not entirely accurate. You do tend to generalize in some isolated instances, while assuming your knowledge base to be accurate. Don't rely on experience to expose your misperceptions. Allow for that possibility before something unwanted happens.

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This web page was last updated on Monday, February 2, 2004.
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