In The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See, Harvard Professor Max Bazerman, opines about how the failure to notice things leads to “poor personal decisions, organizational crises, and societal disasters.” He walks us through the details of each of these, highlighting recent research and how it impacts our awareness of information we’re prone to ignore. Bazerman presents a blueprint to help us be more aware of critical information that we otherwise would have ignored. It causes us to ask the questions, typically found in hindsight but rarely in foresight, “How could that have happened” and “Why didn’t I see it coming?”
Even the best of us fail to notice things, even critical and readily available information in our environment, “due to the human tendency to wear blinders that focus us on a limited set of information.” This additional information, however, is essential to success, and Bazerman argues that “in the future, it will prove a defining quality of leadership.”
Noticing is a System 2 process.
In his best-selling book from 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman discusses Stanovich and West’s distinction between System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is our intuitive system: it is quick, automatic, effortless, implicit, and emotional. Most of our decisions occur in System 1. By contrast, System 2 thinking is slower and more conscious, effortful, explicit, and logical. My colleague Dolly Chugh of New York University notes that the frantic pace of managerial life requires that executives typically rely on System 1 thinking. Readers of this book doubtless are busy people who depend on System 1 when making many decisions. Unfortunately we are generally more affected by biases that restrict our awareness when we rely on System 1 thinking than when we use System 2 thinking.
Noticing important information in contexts where many people do not is generally a System 2 process.
Logic and other strategic thinking tools, like game theory, are also generally system 2 thinking. This requires that we step away from the heat of the moment and think a few steps ahead – imagining how others will respond. This is something that “system 1 intuition typically fails to do adequately.”
So a lot of what Bazerman spends time on is moving toward system 2 thinking when making important judgments.
When you do so, you will find yourself noticing more pertinent information from your environment than you would have otherwise. Noticing what is not immediately in front of you is often counterintuitive and the province of System 2. Here, then, is the purpose and promise of this book: your broadened perspective as a result of System 2 thinking will guide you toward more effective decisions and fewer disappointments.
Rejecting What’s Available
Often the best decisions require that you look beyond what’s available and reject the presented options. Bazerman didn’t always think this way, he needed some help from his colleague Richard Zeckhauser. At a recent talk, Zeckhauser provided the audience with the “Cholesterol Problem.”
Your doctor has discovered that you have a high cholesterol level, namely 260. She prescribes one of many available statin drugs. She says this will generally drop your cholesterol about 30 percent. There may be side effects. Two months later you return to your doctor. Your cholesterol level is now at 195. Your only negative side effect is sweaty palms, which you experience once or twice a week for one or two hours. Your doctor asks whether you can live with this side effect. You say yes. She tells you to continue on the medicine. What do you say?
Bazerman, who has naturally problematic lipids, had a wide body of knowledge on the subject and isn’t known for his shyness. He went with the statin.
Zeckhauser responded, “Why don’t you try one of the other statins instead?” I immediately realized that he was probably right. Rather than focusing on whether or not to stay on the current statin, broadening the question to include the option of trying other statins makes a great deal of sense. After all, there may well be equally effective statins that don’t cause sweaty palms or any other side effects. My guess is that many patients err by accepting one of two options that a doctor presents to them. It is easy to get stuck on an either/or choice, which I … fell victim to at Zeckhauser’s lecture. I made the mistake of accepting the choice as my colleague presented it. I could have and should have asked what all of the options were. But I didn’t. I too easily accepted the choice presented to me.
The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See opens your eyes to what you’re missing.