Long Vs. Short Decisions

Someone gave me a link to this article.

Which is an interesting companion piece to the Gary Klein / Malcolm Gladwell stuff.

Some decisions have to be made quickly. Those individuals that Klein was examining typically had to make life-or-death decisions in short time-frames. Consultation was not an option. And often this decisions only affected a very small number of people (e.g. a firecrew or a sick baby).

In comparision, some decisions have much longer timeframes and may involve more people - which are the decisions that appear in the Ivey journal.

Neither approach (intuitive, quick, "short" vs. consultative, "long") is wrong but each is appropriate for different enviornments.

An issue arises in that managers often develop great "short" skils in high-pressure, team-based environments. They are then promoted and take these behaviours to environments that require "long" skills (e.g. consultation, openness) without recognising that the context for their decision-making has changed. And ego is a factor here.