How to Decide

Get their opinion prior to telling them the method you chose. After that, you can give them the information

To get high-quality feedback, it’s important to put the other person as closely as possible into the same state of knowledge that you were in at the time that you made your decision.

that the way you’re asking the question signals your belief.

Try to stay in a neutral frame as much as possible.

FRAMING EFFECT A cognitive bias in which the way that information is presented influences the way that the listener makes decisions about the information.

when people are in group settings, the decision quality often isn’t better,

That’s a bad combination: having a lot more confidence in the quality of a decision that isn’t necessarily any better.

the information that lives in people’s heads doesn’t necessarily get shared with the group, particularly as a consensus starts to form.

Elicit feedback independently and share it with the group prior to meeting.

people give feedback that more accurately represents their knowledge and preferences when they do it independently and privately, compared with doing it in a group.

This is what eliciting initial feedback and ideas independently (by email or some other means) does. It reduces the artificial appearance of overlap in opinions, better exposing where beliefs diverge.

The most contagious beliefs on a team come from higher-status individuals.

in reality, ideas that come from people of lower status don’t get equal consideration on the merits.

HALO EFFECT A cognitive bias in which a positive impression of a person in one area causes you to have a positive view of that person in other, unrelated, areas.

there are a lot of benefits to having the first pass be anonymous.

Group members with lower status may have different, valuable perspectives. Sometimes, they see innovative solutions others don’t see because they aren’t as anchored to the status quo.

A good group process encourages feedback that includes giving people the space to express a lack of understanding.

A good group process encourages feedback that includes giving people the space to express a lack of understanding. The group as a whole benefits from that because it affords the experts the opportunity to better understand why they believe what they do, and also affords them the opportunity to transfer their knowledge to the other members of the group. And

A good group process encourages feedback that includes giving people the space to express a lack of understanding. The group as a whole benefits from that because it affords the experts the opportunity to better understand why they believe what they do, and also affords them the opportunity to transfer their knowledge to the other members of the group. And sometimes it gives them an <You have reached the clipping limit for this item>

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