Farsighted

How We Make the Decisions that Matter the Most

Overview

I’ve built three UX teams from scratch in my career (0 to 17, 3 to 75, 0 to 40). In each case, in spite of being a researcher myself, we initially focused on interface design – because that is what our colleagues and clients understood. Fortunately, over time all my teams progressed along the Maturity Model that I wrote in 2017.

These days, the consulting team conducts customer journey engagements or Futures work leading to service interventions, digital solutions, or both. Findings from the consulting engagement often require big decisions by our clients, so to better influence the pull through and stickiness of our recommendations I wanted to learn more about how people make decisions.

Recent publications in behavioral economics (Blink, How We Decide, Thinking Fast and Slow) are largely lab-based studies. But reality is messier – key business decisions often have multiple complex considerations, and they are made by a small or medium-sized multi-disciplinary group. This type of group decision-making is the focus of Steven Johnson’s Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most.

Johnson argues that we are better at considering the consequences of our actions than we were in the past, but we can continue to learn from groups seeking to effectively make long-term decisions. He organizes the book around major steps in the decision-making process as he’s defined it – Mapping, Predicting, and Deciding, using engaging examples from history, current events, and fiction to make his points.

Mapping

Mapping is the process of collecting insights, perspectives, and data to chart a course of action.

Johnson describes Benjamin Franklin’s “moral algebra”, which considered pros and cons but also weighed the importance of various arguments; he uses that to make the point that the way we make difficult choices hasn’t changed much in the past two centuries.

Johnson uses the search for Osama Bin Laden during the Obama administration as an example of a complex problem requiring a structured approach. He uses the language of divergence and consensus (p 21), which sounds to me a lot like the diverge and converge of the double-diamond design thinking process – though he never makes that connection in the book.

Johnson describes group dynamics and how they affect present day decision-making. He reiterates what I have read and heard elsewhere many times – diversity of perspective trumps ability. For example, he affirms the value of unique perspectives (p 54), and the risk of over-indexing on points of view that are ‘cognitively central’ versus peripheral (p 51).

What I particularly appreciated in his writing are the specific recommendations and techniques for active inclusion of those alternate perspectives in the decision-making process.

He believes that in order to make effective compound decisions, storytelling is key (p 24-28); the ideal approach is to explore a variety of possible paths and outcomes, while anchoring to a key concept or concern (p 44).

Every group will have blind spots (p 54), and what he characterizes as an “often fatal disease of overconfidence”; only 15% of decision-making groups seek new options beyond those that were originally on the table (p 67).

Johnson shares a case study about New York’s High Line, a viaduct and rail line which was inactive for many years. Locals felt it was an eyesore that needed to be torn down, but for years it remained unclear who should pay for the demolition. At community meetings, several artists (and later a photographer) generated enthusiasm and momentum for turning the space into a park. Eventually a public-private partnership coalesced and acted on the idea. This was only possible, Johnson argues, due to these alternate, marginal voices in an otherwise polarized debate.

Big decisions are never just black and white, yes or no. We must cultivate and engage alternate perspectives and voices to ensure we’ve fully explored the problem space; our decision-making team must embrace that diversity of thought. We trick our minds into seeing the range of alternatives as scenarios play out, preparing us to adapt along the way. This leads us to the next step, Predicting.

Predicting

Predicting is not about aligning decision-makers around a single clear course of action. Rather, it’s about using collective wisdom and alternate perspectives to imagine a web of intertwined decisions and consequences.

I started this book because I thought it would be useful to better understand how to do impactful Futures work. But Johnson makes clear that experts are no better at predicting outcomes than anyone else – in most cases their predictions are less accurate than random guesses (p 82)! In fact, “the more media exposure you had, the less valuable your predictions were likely to be.” (p 83)

Johnson goes on to argue for diversity of thought – though he doesn’t call it that. Being deeply expert in a single field or worldview makes you less capable of projecting future changes (p 83). He says that how people think is more important than expertise (p 84):

The other group consisted of more pragmatic experts who drew on many analytical tools … These experts gathered as much information from as they could … They talked about possibilities and probabilities, not certainties. And while no-one likes to say “I was wrong,” these experts more readily admitted it and changed their minds.
Johnson (p 84) quoting Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgement

Rather than deep expertise, decision-makers who are open to new experiences and perspectives – the most curious – are the most successful forecasters (p 83).

Johnson goes on to talk about several key advances (personal computing, randomized clinical trials), and to argue that these could not have been predicted because the outcomes required the convergence of too many fields (p 88).

How can we bring these learnings to other kinds of decisions – especially societal ones that are much harder to stimulate (p 103)? He believes that Kriegsspiel or War Games, while not infallible, does enable the team to consider alternatives in a more expansive way. Through such exercises we collaborate and ultimately find plot lines that undermine assumptions – and not reinforce them. This helps to avoid confirmation bias, and enables teams to think around blind spots and areas of false confidence (p 119). Imagining the impact of those decision requires empathy and the requisite alternative perspectives (p 122).

These predictions are not a single clear through line from start to finish, but rather a diverse collection of possible actions, outcomes, and consequences that enable the decision-makers to move forward in an aligned way. it offers alternate perspectives which encourages empa

This leads us to the final step, Deciding.

Deciding

Deciding is the process of weighing those alternatives, and choosing the most viable course of action. Attributing a value to each decision and weighing the alternatives is only beneficial if the options are fully explored first.

During his presidency, Ronald Reagan mandated that all government agencies must undertake a “regulatory impact analysis” – (a) benefits, (b) costs, (c) non-quantifiable impact, and (d) substantive alternatives that were discarded and why. This basic framework has lasted through six administrations, and is consistent with the approach that Johnson recommends.

He recommends three key factors for making decisions that will be sound going forward:

Avoid focus on the most likely outcome
Favor paths that allow modifications along the way
Select options with downstream flexibility

We must take an agile and inclusive approach to making big decisions. We should engage with alternate voices and perspectives into our decision-making process and make sure we provide the space for those ‘peripheral’ voices to be heard. We can then carve a well-informed path forward that offers maximum flexibility, and can be adapted as the ripple effects of each prior decision become clear.

Consequences

Toward the end of the book, Johnson touches on the implications for this decision-making approach for both expansive global problems like climate change and for deeply personal decisions like relocation for a job.

For complex global matters, Johnson re-iterates the importance of engaging a broad stakeholder group, a wide range of intellectual disciplines, and ultimately ensuring the group has diversity of thought. Johnson provides the example of predicting the weather and how that’s evolved over time. He reflects that our prediction skills have improved, but we still have to find better ways to measure risk – or live with the consequences. He believes that we should take inspiration from storytelling and genres like science fiction to thoroughly explore options before moving forward.

Maybe it’s possible to invest new ways of making farsighted choices as a society faster than we invest new ways of destroying ourselves. Certainly it’s essential for us to try (p 173).

Johnson also talks about a much more personal decision – his desire to live in California after years of living in Brooklyn. He was enamored about the change but his wife was not, so they agreed to move, with the option of moving back in two years. At first the shift to suburban life made his wife “miserable,” while he felt “liberated”. Over time, both of their perspectives changed, and they ended up splitting their time between coasts – they had created a false binary at the outset.

Johnson goes on to describe the “rich web of influence and consequence that surrounds” our decisions (p 193). He finds fiction a particularly compelling means for exploring alternatives. Why is storytelling and fiction so important? Because it enables us to consider things we haven’t yet experienced in a low risk way (p 203). He believes that literary fiction helps develop theory of mind – exploring the interior landscape of other minds. You can’t run every possible simulation but you can read a thousand novels.

The novel gives us a different kind of simulation. … the path of a human life, changing and being changed by the world that surrounds it (p 18?).

The latest neuroscience research demonstrates that when we are “at rest”, our brains are not necessarily resting with us. Instead, this is when our brain is most “free and unencumbered” – daydreaming. This free thinking uses more of the brain (p 79), and in those moments people are three times more likely to be thinking about the future than the past (p 80). Johnson says that this “future orientation turns out to be a defining characteristic of the brain’s default network” (p 80).

Fiction offers alternate perspectives, mapping “the multidimensional forces that come to bear on the choice itself”. This broadens our thinking encourages empathy. We need the best of science and the humanities to make better decisions because we “see farther when both lights are on.”

In Closing

The book was an enjoyable read, full of terrific examples from George Washington’s wartime decision-making to the Obama administration’s pursuit of Osama-bin-Laden to the history of weather forecasting.

For the purposes of my work in experience transformation, his book reinforced many things I already know – (1) diversity of thought leads to better – if sometimes unexpected – outcomes (2) having a wealth of options ensures flexibility to meet arising conditions, and (3) agile decision-making is a necessary approach given the complexity of the decisions we make and the ever-changing conditions in which we make them.

I could not possibly do justice to all of it in this post, but I hope you’ll read the book itself if my summary inspires you!