We spent a fair amount of time talking about emotional tagging and you can see how important it is in all kinds of situations. But now I want to talk about a second process about how our brains think, how our brains help us make decisions for good or for bad. It's called one plan at a time decision-making. We all make decisions without even deciding if you can think about that. In other words, we choose a course of action, we do something, based on our subjective, subconscious process rather than follow the traditional decision-making process that textbooks tell us about, identify the problem or opportunity, analyze, generate options, weigh the options, choose the best option. We usually just follow one plan at a time, and if it doesn't work, we change the plan. Sometimes we don't change the plan, we get into even bigger problems. But that one plan at a time turns out to be an extremely common method that we use to make decisions. It's very different than what you probably think and probably what you've learned in traditional classroom. Here's a story I could share with you that really illustrates this one plan at a time. A fire is reported in the basement of a four story apartment building. On arrival, the fire commander sees no smoke or flames. He finds a door to the basement enters and he sees flames spreading up the laundry chute. He immediately sends firemen up the building to get above the fire and spray down onto it. But when the firemen get to the floor above, they report back to the commander that the fire has already gone past them. The firemen quickly move up to a higher floor and a higher floor. But the fire is past them at every turn. The commander then walks around to the front of the building to re-access the situation, and he sees smoke coming out from under the roof. Immediately he switches to a search and rescue strategy, orders his team to get everyone out of the building asap and calls for more help. In this example, which Gary Klein discusses in his book, Sources of Power, there's no traditional decision-making process. At no point did the commander compare alternatives, weigh pros and cons, and follow the usual step-by-step decision-making process the textbooks like to recommend. Instead, at each step of the way, the commander made a decision, a one plan a time decision, and then he executed on it and then he made another decision based on what was happening in real-time. When he arrived, he diagnosed a vertical fire straight up from the basement up the laundry chute. Therefore, there was only one decision he even considered. Get on top of the fire and spray the water down to snuff it out. It wasn't any big debate. There certainly wasn't any evaluation of different alternatives. There was only one decision to be made, and that's what he did. As the fire worked itself up the building, each successive decision was designed to spray down on the fire but the fire was moving too fast. At that point, it was clear that his first decision, his first one plan at a time would not work. That the fire was up to the roof, that the situation was much more dangerous. He quickly determined the next course of action, search and rescue. Happily everyone managed to get out of the building without serious injury. Again, at no point was there a comparison of alternatives. Each time the commander made a single decision based on what was known. It turns out that most of us, most of the time make decisions in exactly this manner. I mean, not always. Sometimes say when we're buying a car, we're going to carefully research options and weigh them carefully. I mean, I got that. It's not always the case, but often it is. When it's something that we do on a regular basis like the fire commander doing his job, it is much more likely that we'll follow the one plan at a time approach to decision-making. Is this good or is this bad? Well, if it's in your wheelhouse, it could be good because it's going to be fast and that's often very important. But fast is only good if you're ready to shift, to pivot when things go downhill, like the commander pivoted when the fire was seen to be hitting the roof, he came up with a totally different one plan at a time. In Modules 2 and 3 of this course, we're also going to consider situations where one plan at a time might be more risky and hence it will require us to think again. But at this point, the thing I want you to keep in mind is that each of us, and that includes you, often make decisions without considering multiple options and the relative pros and cons of those options, and we do this because we are human. That's how our brains are wired. Whether it helps us or hurts us will depend on our ability to recognize what we're doing, when and how and where, and our ability not to lock into a past decision when it's not going the right way. If you've already done Course 1 in this specialization, lessons learned from the Why Smart Executives Fail project, you may be able to reflect back and think about some of those common strategic mistakes we discussed. Following a one best way Rubbermaid when they had their focus on new product innovation, even though customers were demanding cost controls, lower costs and tighter logistics or ignoring change again, with Wang Labs not adapting to the rise of the PC or an inaccurate view of reality. For example, bricks-and-mortar stores not understanding the importance of e-commerce. In each instance, you will see the one plan at a time, decision logic at work, and the unwillingness of companies and leaders of those companies to pivot and adjust when the facts have changed. The fire commander adjusted, people were saved. For companies like these that I just described, it didn't turn out so well because they were unable to break out of that one plan at a time. But isn't it interesting how people think, how our brains are wired? Let's keep that in mind. Most of the time, no matter what we think, the one plan at a time, decision-making process is how we do things.
