Leadership Decision Making

Europe Site   Site for Asia     Site for Middle East   UK Site   USA Site

Para mis visitantes del mundo de habla hispana, este sitio se encuentra disponible en español en:
Versión en Español    Sitio Espejo para España    Sitio Espejo para América Latina


Decisions are at the heart of leader success, and at times there are critical moments when they can be difficult, perplexing, and nerve-racking. However, the boldest decisions are the safest. This source provides useful and practical guidance for making efficient and effective decisions in both public and private life. Nothing succeeds a success better than another sweet success.

Professor Hossein Arsham   

To search the site, try Edit | Find in page [Ctrl + f]. Enter a word or phrase in the dialogue box, e.g. "decision" or "value" If the first appearance of the word/phrase is not what you are looking for, try Find Next.

   MENU
  1. Introduction and Summary
  2. How People Avoid Making Serious Decisions
  3. When One Should Not Make Serious Decisions
  4. How to Make Good Decisions
  5. Decisions Concerning Personal Life
  6. Problem of Determination of Values and Rank among Values
  7. Thinkable Decisions and the Economy of Strategic Thinking
  8. What Is Man? Man Has No Nature, But Has History
  9. How the Mind Works: From Deciding to Action
  10. How to Distinguish among Rumor, Belief, Opinion, and Fact
  11. Leadership versus Managerial's Duties and Styles
  12. Cognitive Decision Making
  13. Behavioral Decision Making
  14. Ethics and Decision Making
  15. Leadership in a Diverse and Multicultural Environmen
  16. Human Side of Decision Making
  17. Personal and Public Views of Rationality
  18. Human Understanding in a Historical Context
  19. General Further Readings
  20. Appendex: A Collection of Keywords and Phrases

Companion Sites:


Introduction and Summary

"Somewhere along the line of development we discover what we really are, and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else's life."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt   

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Have courage to use your own understanding! Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.

Declaration of Independence in American Revolution contains the beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward so an indefinite future, have lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do. These words are more explosive and revolutionary than anything written ever those are a continual inspiration to the entire oppressed individuals around the world.

The total effect of the culture and industry is one of anti-enlightenment that is the progressive technical domination of nature, becomes mass deception and is turned into a means for fettering consciousness. It impedes the development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for themselves.

You are free to decide within certain limits: A free person is the one who know and recognizes his/her feasible region e.g., set by his/her society. The slave is not aware of such limits. A free person is wise to recognize what is under his/her control and what is not, and has the ability to accept the first and extend the second one. You may have heard that "If there is a will, then there must be a way". In fact the advice should be in the opposite order, i.e. "If there is a way, then there might be a will". It is right because the feasible region might be empty, and one might ignores one or some constraints, and then being in a big trouble, e.g., willing beyond ones' ability.

The unrealistic expectations of freedom and rights to make your own decisions will destroy a person unless it is recognized that these ideals are privileges and not necessities and therefore they are accompanied by responsibilities.

Fear is not in the habit of speaking the truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed. Nor does anyone who is apt to get angry when hearing the truth should wonder why he does not hear it. For example, when I asked a business manager what had made his organization one of the best in his industry, he pointed to his CIO and said "Joe is a millionaire. He can quit any time. He says what he thinks is right!"

Mind is what your brain does consciously. Our minds perform a series of information processing in order to form strategies needed to live our daily lives. This process is known as decision making. However, aside from making decisions, because of many kinds of uncertainties we also face a problem called decidophobia, which is the fear of making the wrong decisions combined with nervous agitation. Moreover, fear of judgement by others is a sure path to unhappiness which is a state of mind.

Decisions are at the heart of success, and at times there are critical moments when they can be difficult, perplexing, and nerve racking. This site provides help and guidance for making efficient and effective decisions by putting to use a well-structured approach and well-focused process known as the modeling or paradigm process. The word paradigm comes from the Greek word paradeigma, meaning "model" or "pattern." A model represents a way of looking at the world, a shared set of assumptions that enable us to understand or predict behavior. Models have a powerful influence on individuals and on society because our view of the world is determined by our set of assumptions about it. To put it another way, our vision is often affected by what we believe about the world; our beliefs often determine the information that we "see."

Decision-making is about facing a question, such as, "To be or not to be?", i.e., to be the one you want to be or not to be? That is a decision. Humanity has always lived in the shadow of fears. Yet almost nothing was known about fear until Freud began the study of unusual phobias. A little later, some psychologists suggested that one dread is common to all mankind: the dread of death.

Decisions, decisions and more decisions! The fear of making serious decisions is a new kind of fear, called decidophobia, proclaimed by Walter Kaufmann at Princeton University in 1973. The fear of making the wrong decisions is well known to any responsible manager. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face." Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. There has never yet been a person in the history of mankind who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering. The difficulty in life is the choice.

The Latin word Decido has two meanings. It can mean to decide and also to fall off. Hence plants are called deciduous if their leaves fall off in the fall. The word fall started as "leaf fall" for autumn in the 15th century. The expression "take the plunge" suggests the relevance of both meanings. Making a wrong decision provokes the fear of falling.

An effective and proven decision process has been developed over the last 70 years and is known as Operations Research/Management Science/Decision Science/Success Science (OR/MS/DS/SS). In the serious decisions that mold the future of your business, freedom becomes tangible; serious decisions are objects of extreme dread. Serious business decisions that ultimately shape, guide, and direct our future are extremely fearful to business managers. These decisions involve norms, standards, and the comparison and choice of goals. Learning the structured, well-focused approach to the decision-making process lessens decidophobia. The gem of Applied Management Science is that it turns the old adage that "business managers are born, not made" into myth. If one can master management science applications, then no problem is too big nor any decision too overwhelming. The goal of management science experts is to wipe out decidophobia.

The first requisite for success science is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one decision problem/opportunity incessantly without growing weary. Just being worried about making serious decisions is like sitting on a rocking chair--it gives you something to do but doesn't get you anywhere. Therefore worrying about making a decision is a waste of time. A decision is something you have the capability of changing. Anything else is a fact of life. The first principle in making good decision is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Moreover, making a decision and implementing one are two different things. Here is a question for you: Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left? A protracted decision is only one part of the process of choosing because it lacks the commitment to implement the decision. There is a big difference between making a decision and implementing it. The measure of success is not whether you have a tough decision to deal with, but whether it's the same decision you had before. Decide like a man of action; implement like a man of thought. It does not take much strength to decide what to do, but it requires great strength to do things.

Unlike deterministic models (risk-free decisions), the outcome of some decisions depends on the second party, as is the case in any advertising campaign strategic decisions in a competitive market. Therefore, one of the characteristics of decision analysis problems is that "good" decision-making does not necessarily bring about good outcomes. "How could I have been so stupid?" former USA president, John F. Kennedy, asked after he approved the Bay of Pigs invasion.

A decision usually involves three steps:

  1. A recognition of a need: A dissatisfaction within oneself--a void or need;
  2. A decision to change--to fill the void or need;
  3. A conscious dedication to implement the decision.

So aside from that, we see that making the correct decisions is not only what we want to do, but includes what we have to do. The fool who repeats again and again: "I am bound, I am bound," remains in bondage. The fear of making the wrong decision is what pushes and guides us to making a decision by utilizing a scientific approach. This is what Management Science is all about.

One must distinguish between science facts and science fictions. Science fiction is a form of fiction that was developed in the 20th century and deals principally with the impact of imagined science upon society or individuals. Management science is a science fact which is evolving, self-correcting and, unlike science fiction, not valid for eternity. Whenever science is distorted, sensationalized or even reduced to a pseudo scientific level, a grave disservice is done to the public's attempt to understand scientific facts.

Each and every business day the manager puts many decision questions to the test. The questions must first be identified as problems or opportunities, verified; scaled into mathematical models for which an answer will abound, and then controlled by updating the solutions because of the dynamic nature of business decisions. Mathematics has been recognized as an autonomous interior constructional activity which, although it can be applied to an exterior world, neither in its origin nor in its methods depends on an exterior world. The criterion of a good mathematical model is confined to its usefulness in making good strategic decisions. This is the absolute core of Management Science approach to decision-making, which is the science of decision-making. Not all science facts have practical usefulness. For example, Darwin's insight had no practical payoff, but he was a revered figure because he changed the way humans see their place in nature.

It is this approach to decision-making that makes the business successful. But it is important to note that such a process does not come easily. Again, this process is of a three-fold origin that encapsulates doctrines of computer integration, mathematical scaling and modeling and finally re-entering new data transformations that will occur as time ticks onward. This is the complex analysis that will deduct our thinking in this regard.

Management Science can help reduce or eliminate the fear of making wrong decisions by providing help with the decision-making process. In fact, management science's goal is to eliminate decidophobia. This is accomplished through the phased processes of management science that dissects the components of the decision into workable elements and allows one to proceed to the decision-making stage with sound knowledge on which to base one's choice. However, if you choose not to use management science, there are plenty of other ways to avoid making decisions.

Further Readings:
Deutsch M., and P. Coleman, (Eds.), The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 2000.
Drucker P., Managing knowledge means managing oneself, a Leader to Leader, Vol No 16, Spring 2000. A very interesting article, warning that "... For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it."
Fuller J., Managing Performance Improvement Projects: Preparing, Planning, and Implementing, Pfeiffer & Co., 1997.
Janis I., and L. Mann, Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice and Commitments, Free Press, 1977.
Kaufmann W., From Decidophobia to Autonomy: Without Guilt and Justice, A Delta Book, 1973.
McClure L., Anger and Conflict in the Workplace: Spot the Signs, Avoid the Trauma, Manassas Park Pub., VA, 2000.
Siewert Ch., The Significance of Consciousness, Princeton University Press, 1999. The relationship between phenomenal and intentional thinking is explored.
Steiner C., Scripts People Live: Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts, Grove Press, 1990.

How People Avoid Making Serious Decisions

In The Histories, written in 450 B.C., Herodotus makes the following statement:

"If an important decision is to be made [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk and the following day the master of the house...submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk."

What a strange way to make decisions, you might say. Perhaps it is, but there are even stranger methods of human choice.

Misery of Indecisiveness
In the Misery of Indecisiveness


Popular Strategic Methods:

Recourse to someone or even something else: Examples are astrology (not astronomy which is a science), palm readings, looking up at stars, dialing 1-900 psychic friends, telepathy, telekinesis, the aura, crystals, dreams, colors, Feng Shui, numerology, fortune-tellers, etc. Physiognomy is any judgment about a person's character based on external appearance. Examples of physiognomy are: reflexology (your feet know), iridology (your eyes know). Physiognomy dates back to Aristotle.

For example, in contrast to astrology, one must accept the fact that success is not due to a fortuitous concourse of stars at our birth, but due to a steady trail of sparks from the grindstones of hard work, determination, good planning, and perseverance. When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened.

In all these popular avoidance strategies, you are better off taking advice from Kermit the Frog. A New York City detective said, "I've gone into hundreds of fortune-tellers, and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest them." Fortune befriends the bold who make good decisions.
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

False hopes: Hoping for something to happen over which we have no control over its outcome. For example, hoping your airplane lands safely while you are just a passenger and not the pilot of the plane. False hope and fear are two sides of the same coin. We can promise according to our hopes that are under our control only (and have some degree of certainty on its outcome), however, we avoid making decisions according to our fears of the outcomes.

Do not think about it: The decision-makers who are waiting for something to turn up, might start with their shirt sleeves. You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable. Doing nothing about a problem on hand, will certainly get out of control and devour other elements of your business too. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Do anchoring: Give disproportional weights to some information instead of waiting as long as possible, to have all the information.

Sunk-cost conscious: Repeat the same decision because "you have invested so much in this approach (or your current job) that you cannot abandon it or make another decision (or look for a better position)."

Failure to reflect on the problem: Reflection before action is often resisted by some managers. They often feel that reflection takes too much time, requires too much work, or they do not know much about decision problem/opportunity. Remember that: A man should always be already booted to take his journey.

Look for confirming-evidence: Seek out the information to support an existing preselection and discount opposing ones. To put what you like against what you dislike is the hanky-panky of the mind.

Pray for a miracle: Whatever we pray for, we pray for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: "Great God, grant that twice two be not four." A miracle is an event described by those to whom it was told by men who did not see it. As Emerson said, "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect."

The worse things get,
the harder people pray,
the worse things get.

Be over-confident: This makes you optimistic and then make high risk decisions. As Henri Poincare said, "Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either, we dispense with the need to think for ourselves."

Be too prudent: Be over curious long enough to delay the decision. If you are too careful, you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over what you are going to decide. Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the opportunities, by fearing to make our decision. Indecision is debilitating; it feeds upon itself; it is, one might almost say, habit-forming. Not only that, but it is contagious; it transmits itself to others who depend on you.

Misrepresentation: Use argument that "seems" scientific. For example, compute and use the average salary as a typical representative of salary rather than the median.

Pass the buck: Pass off responsibility of making the decision to someone else. Do not make decisions by yourself. Bring in someone to blame if things go wrong. For example, for life's problems some may marry to constantly blame their spouse because it is easier than taking responsibility. Remember that it takes two to tango.

Have second thoughts: Second thoughts have aborted more useful decisions than all the difficult circumstances, overwhelming obstacles, and dangerous detours fate ever could throw at you. Undermining your authenticity by succumbing to someone else's second thoughts is a sinister, subtle, and seductive form of self-abuse.

Succumb to failure: Believe that the choices you will make are predestined and you are bound to fail (one gets used to failure) versus the result of hard work and thought.

Set up a committee: To make decisions, try to set up a committee not necessarily consisting of experts. So if everything goes well, every member is proud of such a decision. But if everything goes wrong, nobody is responsible. Every member would say, "It was not I; it was the committee's decision. You see, we couldn't agree, therefore we voted". Put a face to a faceless group, call it "the committee." A committee is an animal with four back legs. The committee's members, who are wishing that just to vote in "either/or" fashion are those who are not able to contribute to the decision-making process, therefore shouldn't be trusted with an important decision. A group decision support system could be a technologically advanced version of this strategy. Of course setting up a committee could be done correctly with the proper experts. However, my experience has shown that committees are used more to displace blame and accountability. I see no good in having group decision makers. Let one person be the decision maker; let one person be responsible and accountable. A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. The greatest things are often accomplished by individual people, not by committees.
What does it mean to say that committee might have a responsibility? Committee cannot have a responsibility any more than the business can. The only entities that can have responsibilities are people.

False decentralization:Decentralization could take place when an authoritative manager delegates accountability to a new "director of…" for every new decision-making problem, but not delegating any authority.

Failure to define the problem: This certainly lends to a wrong solution. Not knowing the problem, any solution is wrong. If you know the problem then, your solution might be good.

Common Sense-based decisions: If you start making decisions on the basis of conventional wisdom or chatter in the hall, generally speaking, you will make the wrong decision. What is called common sense is almost always uncommon.

Failure to understand the problem: This is caused, among others, by subjectivity, irrational analysis, lateness or procrastination, lack of sensitivity, and lack of focus.

Complexity is confusing to the decision maker: Simplify and even change the problem to something which you have a strategic solution for (e.g. this is committed by many OR/MS/DS/SS analysts when they change the model to fit their strategic solution algorithm).

Rationalization to limit the course of actions: This strategy is very popular. Stack the cards to make one alternative clearly right and remove all risk.

Reasoning by analogy: Analogies are not made for proof.

Information: Information gathered is not valid. Decisions are often made first and information sought to support the solution, or much of the information gathered is irrelevant to the decision-making.

False alternative: It attempts to box the decision-maker into a corner from which there is no escape except to accept the alternative. "If you are against abortion, you must work for a law against it." This is an example of false alternative, because you may think that a law against it is even worse.

Decision is only symbolic: One will fight hard for a policy and then be indifferent to its implementation.

The Decision maker has obligations: Sometimes decision makers act against integrity to meet some critical personal obligations.

Toe the line: When faced with questions such as "What should I do?", "How should I live?", etc., you may "Toe the line", that is, follow the group, don't disagree and do what others are doing in your profession as men in uniform (i.e., one form) do.

Best of all, decline responsibility: Some shrugged their shoulders as if to shake off whatever chips of responsibility might have lodged there. Stagnate or do nothing is another possible one. Some people do this in belief that the right strategic solution will eventually become obvious. Decline all responsibility, or better still, do nothing; i.e., status quoism. However, "not to decide is to decide". A business manager makes decisions. Whether they are right or wrong, they get made, and they are clear. A weak manager procrastinates and gives false signals, leaving subordinates to charge off in different directions. To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. The choice not to choose is the choice to remain unconscious and, therefore, to wield power irresponsibly.

Post-decision anxieties: The more highly desirable the alternatives that must be rejected and the faster the decision must be made, the greater are these anxieties (also known as cognitive dissonance). Most people accentuate the positive in their decision and deny or ignore the positive aspect of the rejected alternatives.

Misattribution of causes: Attribute your own success to your skills and hard work and your failures to unavoidable external forces. Do the opposite for other people's success and failure.

Your anxiety is directly proportional to your mental modeling process of reality, for you bring on yourself unlimited fears and unrealistic desires. Decision-making involves a series of steps. The mental modeling process begins with the formation of goals and proceeds to the identification of problems and alternative courses of action. It does not end until well after the decision or choice is actually made and the post decision anxieties have been experienced. Decision-making, however, is one management function that is important at all points in the process of management.

When One Should Not Make Serious Decisions?

Do not make any serious decisions because you are angry, hurt, depressed, desperate, or frightened. Do not make decisions just to get revenge or to harm someone else. Do not make decision when you are incapable of rational thought. Make decision for the right reasons and when you are calm and thoughtful. Even at these states of mind you must decide whether making any decision is necessary or desirable. Spend some careful thought before acting, so that you will not end up making unnecessary problems.

The following sets of situations for avoiding decision-making are legitimate and appropriate. These conditions include: depression and other mental illness which impairs decision-making functions, coercion, and revelation states. There are situations when you should not make serious decisions. For example, depression is the inability to construct a future. Suppose a person in an executive position within a company has Depression, which is a mental disease, he or she should not be in charge of making serious decisions while being under medical treatment. Otherwise, it could be costly to the company For example, the well-publicized case of the Norwegian Prime Minister depression situation, he conquered his depression to assume his usual responsibilities after staying out of office for a few weeks. You might have read A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash, or seen its movie version, A Beautiful Mind. Richard Nixon claimed that, "I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes."

Coercive decision-making: Coercive persuasions are Mind Control tactics which are part of a Brainwashing practice. They are designed to greatly modify a person's self-concept, perception of reality, and interpersonal relations. When successful, they influence the victim's Thinking Straight ability. Brainwashing is a very intricate process that consists of two stages:

Coping with such an inhumane treatment by other people requires first of all that one should never allow the feeling that he/she is a victim but rather a survivor:

The most effective propaganda and indoctrination system is one where its victims do not think they are being propagandized and indoctrinated. We are all familiar with "mild" persuasive techniques used in commercial advertising campaigns to influence consumers' buying behavior. "They" tell us we’ll be healthier, happier, sexier, smarter if only we purchase their products. Many people are unhappy, and neurotic today partly because advertising has caused them to have unrealistic expectations of life, themselves, their jobs due to the fantasy-land products and services that are constantly pushed on them.

Solving a problem by creating a new one: Often, because of deep frustrations in facing a difficult problem, one may unfortunately solve it by creating a bigger problem. This strategy tries to get rid of a present problem with the unfortunate byproduct of forming a new problem. For example using alcohol instead of facing the difficulties of the problem courageously will only result in the realization that if alcohol kills germs it also removes personal dignity. In reality, the "happy-hours" are followed by the misery of addiction. Every solution may have a problem.

Being in a revelation state: Whenever you are feeling an extremely pleasant or very deep sadness state, characterize a revelation state of being. You should never make decisions based on whatever you said or committed yourself that you will do while being in a revelation state. They are merely declarations made out of extreme emotions rather than results of calm, well focused thinking. The best recommendation is to never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass.

Further Readings:
Arsham H., Decidofobia: Miedo a la toma de decisiones importantes. ¿Cómo evitar tomar decisiones importantes?, Revista Inter-Forum, 16(3), 50-62, 2002.
De La Boétie E., The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Harry Kurz (Translator), Black Rose Books Ltd., 1998.
Gracian B., The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle, Currency Publisher, New York, 1992, Translation and Introduction by Ch. Maurer. This is a collection of aphorisms and reflections on the art of success in both private and public decision making.
Leach J., Survival Psychology, Macmillian, 1994.
Meerloo, J., The Rape of the Mind, The University Library, 1961.
Rosen M., On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology, Harvard University Press., 1996.
Sargant W., Battle For The Mind, Heinemann, London, 1976.
Stephens L., and G. Graham, When Self-Consciousness Breaks: Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts, MIT Press, 2000. Examines thought insertion as example of what the authors call "alienated self-consciousness."
Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, R. Sawyer (Translator), Barnes and Noble Company, 1994.
Sun-Tzu, and G. Michaelson, Sun Tzu: The Art of War for Managers, Pressmark International, 1999.

Visit also the Mindful-Things Web site.

How to Make Good Decisions

Unlike the strategies used in the previous section which tell you what to do, it is possible to learn how to make good decisions. It is possible to learn the process of making good strategic decisions by practiced deciding. This Web site is about practiced deciding, to which you must give enough thought. You will learn how to use your own abilities within a focused and structured decision process to actively and pro-actively make decisions. Active decision-making involves a responsible choice that you must make, while pro-active decision making is the practice of making decisions in advance just like "in the case of fire".

Decision Problems or Decision Opportunities: At one time or another, organizations develop an over-abundance of decision problems. Sometimes they can be linked to organizational trauma, like down sizing, budget restraints or workload increases, but sometimes they evolve over time with no apparent triggering event. Increased complaining, a focus on reasons why things can't be done, and what seems to be a lack of active role characterize the "problem" organization. If the manager is walking negative and talking in a negative way, staff will follow.

In many instances we forget to find positives. When an employee makes an impractical solution, we are quick to dismiss the idea. We should be identifying the effort while gently discussing the idea. Look for small victories, and talk about them. Turning a problem into an opportunity is a result of many little actions. Provide positive recognition as soon as you find out about good performance. Do not couple positive strokes with suggestions for improvement. Separate them. Combining them devalues the recognition for many people. It is easy to get caught in the general complaining and bitching, particularly in customers' complains.

Decisions are an inevitable part of human activities. It requires the right attitude. Every problem, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity. In most situations the decision-maker must view the problems as opportunities rather than solving problems. For example, suppose you receive a serious complaint letter from a dissatisfied customer. You may turn this problem into an opportunity by finding out more about what is wrong with the product/service, learning from the customer's experience in order to improve the quality of your product/service. It all depends on the decision-maker's attitude. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity.

A deliberate effort to broaden your experiences is the single most helpful effort in making good decisions. By exposing yourself to a variety of different experiences causes you to look at things from different perspectives. This provides you with extra mind-eyes to see problems and issues, and compare them to apparently unrelated situations and see new opportunities.

Search process approach by diagramming: Most of your decisions can be made using your past experiences and some strategic thinking. You may encounter problems where one wrong decision could have adverse long-term effects and lead to severe mistakes and considerable failures. In many situations, small bad decisions turn out to have important consequences, as for example, in air traffic accidents. When things go wrong, one may try to discover the causes for it. In these types of decision problems that some historical knowledge and experience, the decision-maker may apply a search process to find the main factors that cause the problem. This will enable the decision-maker to make the appropriate decisions and take the necessary steps to remedy the situation.

From the start of human history, diagrams have been pervasive in communication. The role of diagrams and sketches in communication, cognition, creative thought, and decision-making is a growing field. Consider the question: "why has profit declined?" The following diagram contains a search process by diagraming for this decision problem:

The Search Process approach

Subjective and Objective Decision-Making: Your decisions might be categorized in two groups with possible overlaps in some cases. One category is subjective decision-making which are private, such as how you want to live your life, or decide on something just because "It feels good". In subjective decisions you might also consider your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The other group of decisions is objective, purely unemotional decision-makings, which are public, and require one to "Step outside one" so that you can discount your emotions. For example, a CIO deciding for the company must ask among other questions, "Can I convince the shareholders?" This group of decision-making involves responsibility, which requires rational, defensible and accountable decisions. Therefore, the first group consists of private decisions which might involve emotion, and the second is almost entirely based on rational decision-making. However, the really hard decisions involve a combination of both. The difficulty might arise from the fact that emotions and rational strategic thinking are on two different sides of the human brain, and in difficult decisions one must be able to use both sides simultaneously. The following table contains the two extreme approaches of human's mind, namely the pure-subjectivity and the pure-objectivity:

Subjectivity versus Objectivity of Human's Mind
Subjectivism Objectivism
Decision Voluntarism Determinism
Ontology Nominalism Realism
Epistemology Normative Positivism
Methodology Ideology Experimental

The Decision-Making Process: A decision-maker must first decide on his/her values and set goals to insure a fruitful decision-making process. The environment you fashion out of your decisions is the only climate you will ever live in. Therefore, before taking any course of action one must discover/create a set of alternative courses of action and gather information about each. Having gathered the information with which to make a decision, one must apply information for each course of action to predict the outcomes of each possible alternatives and make a decision for implementation. Out of every good decision, comes forth a new problem that will require another effort. Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult decision problem.

Personal Decision-Making Process

In the decision-making modeling process we must investigate the effects of presenting different decision alternatives retrospectively; that is, "as if" you have implemented your strategy. The decision has already been made under a different course of actions. The key to a good decision is reflection before action, therefore, the sequence of steps in the above decision-making modeling process must be considered in reverse order. For example, the output (which is the result of our action) must be considered first. The following are the decision-making sequential steps with some possible loops:

  1. Value and the Objective: Consider the full range of objectives to be fulfilled and the values implicated by your action.

  2. Set of Actions: Thoroughly consider a wide range of possible alternative courses of action. The above decision-making process includes the study of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision-maker. Therefore making a decision implies that there are alternative choices to be considered, and in such a case we want not only to identify as many of these alternatives as possible but to choose the one that best fits with our goals, desires, lifestyle, values, and so on.

  3. Evaluate the Consequences: Carefully weigh whatever you know about the costs and risks of negative as well as positive consequences that could flow from each alternative.

  4. Gathering Information: Intensively search for new information relevant to further evaluation of the alternatives. Information can be classified as explicit and tacit forms. The explicit information can be explained in structured form, while tacit information is inconsistent and fuzzy to explain. Decision-making process must include the reduction of uncertainty and doubt about the uncontrollable inputs. This can be achieved by gathering reliable information. Although the uncertainty cannot be eliminated in most cases, however the more useful information reduces certain amount of risk.

  5. Information Processing: Correctly assimilate and take account of any new information or expert judgment, even when the information does not support the course of action initially preferred.

  6. Action Assessment: Re-examine positive and negative consequences of known alternatives, including those originally regarded as unacceptable, before making a final decision.

  7. Implementation of Your Decision: Make detailed provisions for implementing and executing the chosen course of action, including contingency plans for known risks and adjustments. The art of life is a constant readjustment to our situation. The decision-maker must have a set of contingent decisions at this stage. These are decisions that have been made but put on hold until some condition is met.

Finally, I would like to list some characteristics of "Good" decision makers:

Other Widely Used Decision Analysis Methods

Selection of an appropriate decision technology depends mostly on the type of information available and the technical working knowledge of the decision analyst. The most popular techniques are Pareto Analysis, Paired Comparison Analysis, Grid Analysis, Weighing the pros and cons, Force Field Analysis, Six Thinking Hats, and the Cost/Benefit Analysis, among others including the Decision Tree and Influence Diagram , which have graphical representations as effective decision-making tools. Any decision technology might be helpful in providing some insights, however, the ultimate responsibility is yours in even deciding what technique to use and what decision to make.

Paired comparison analysis: Paired Comparison Analysis helps you to work out the importance of a number of options relative to each other. It is particularly useful where you do not have objective data to base this on. This makes it easy to choose the most important problem to solve, or select the solution that will give you the greatest advantage. Paired Comparison Analysis helps you to set priorities where there are conflicting demands on your resources. In using this technique, list your options. Then draw up a grid with each option as both a row and a column header. Use this grid to compare each option with each other option, one-by-one. For each comparison, decide which of the two options is most important, and then assign a score to show how much more important it is. You can then consolidate these comparisons so that each option is given a percentage importance.

Grid analysis: Grid Analysis is a useful technique to use for making a decision. It is most effective where you have a number of good alternatives and many factors to take into account. The first step is to list your options and then the factors that are important for making the decision. Lay these out in a table, with options as the row labels, and factors as the column headings. Next work out the relative importance of the factors in your decision. Show these as numbers. You use these numbers to weight your preferences by the importance of the factor. These values may be obvious - if they are not, then use a technique such as Paired Comparison Analysis to estimate them. The next step is to work your way across your table, scoring each option for each of the important factors in your decision. Score each option from 0 (poor) to 3 (very good). Note that you do not have to have a different score for each option - if none of them are good for a particular factor in your decision, then all options should score 0. Now multiply each of your scores by the values for your relative importance. This will give them the correct overall weight in your decision. Finally add up these scores for your options. The option that scores the highest is the best.

Pros-Cons-Interesting implications method: Prior to the science of the making decision era most managers relied on the "Pros-Cons-Interesting implications method". In using this approach, simply write down the proposed decision and then below it, draw up a table with headings 'Pros', 'Cons' and 'Interesting implications'. In the column underneath the 'Pros' heading, write down all the positive points of taking the action. Underneath the 'Cons' heading write down all the negative effects. In the 'Interesting implications' column write down the extended implication of the action, whether positive or negative. The main weakness of this approach is that the score you assign can be entirely subjective. Therefore, this approach may not help you in defending yourself if the outcome of your decision is undesirable to those whom you are accountable. It is known that, Benjamin Franklin based all his important decisions using the Pros-and-Cons methodology.

Weighing the pros and cons: To use the weighing pros and cons, draw up a table headed up 'Plus', 'Minus', and 'Implications'. In the column underneath 'Plus', write down all the positive results of taking the action, then underneath 'Minus' write down all the negative effects. In the 'Implications' column write down the implications and possible outcomes of taking the action, whether positive or negative. At this stage it may already be obvious whether or not you should implement the decision. If it is not, consider each of the points you have written down and assign a positive or negative score to it appropriately. The scores you assign may be quite subjective. Once you have done this, add up the score. A strongly positive score shows that an action should be taken a strongly negative score that it should be avoided.

The Force field analysis is a useful technique for looking at all the forces for and against a decision. In effect, it is a specialized method of weighing pros and cons. By carrying out the analysis you can plan to strengthen the forces supporting a decision, and reduce the impact of opposition to it. List all forces for change in one column, and all forces against change in another column. Assign a score to each force, from 1 (weak) to 5 (strong). Draw a diagram showing the forces for and against change. Show the size of each force as a number next to it. Often the most elegant solution is the first: just trying to force change through may cause its own problems. People can be uncooperative if change is forced on them.

Six thinking hats: Multi-perspective analysis Six Thinking Hats is used to look at decisions from a number of important perspectives. This forces you to move outside your habitual thinking style, and helps you to get a more rounded view of a situation. Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint. This is part of the reason that they are successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at a problem from an emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoint. This can mean that they underestimate resistance to plans, fail to make creative leaps and do not make essential contingency plans. Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive. Emotional people may fail to look at decisions calmly and rationally. You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of blocking the confrontations that happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem. Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

1. White Hat: With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them. This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

2. Red Hat: 'Wearing' the red hat, you look at problems using reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.

3. Black Hat: Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them.

4. Yellow Hat: The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

5. Green Hat: The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here.

6. Blue Hat: 'Blue Hat Thinking' stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, etc.

A variant of this technique is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors, architects, sales directors, etc.) or different customers.

Further Readings:
Adair J., Decision Making and Problem Solving, Beekman Publishing, 1997. For the expert or beginner, this is a self-learning aid, instant checklist, and an ongoing source of ideas and practical help. A pocketful of proven tips, tools, and techniques to master the organizational and people skills for efficient and effective task management.
Allais M., and O. Hagen, Cardinalism: A Fundamental Approach, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994.
Covey S., The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Running Press, 2000.
De Bono E., Six Thinking Hats: An Essential Approach to Business Management, Little Brown & Co, 1985.
Hogarth R., Judgement and Choice: The Psychology of Decision, Wiley & Sons, 1987.
Lewin K., Resolving Social Conflicts: Force Field Theory in Social Science, American Psychological Association Press, 1997.
Noone D., Creative Problem Solving, Barrons Educational Series, 1998. Another freshly formatted and updated BUSINESS SUCCESS book, this volume shows managers how to train the mind to free up its problem-solving capabilities. Advice is offered on how to lead a "brainstorming" group, stimulate thinking and help generate new ideas.
Pfeffer J., and R. Sutton, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action, Harvard Business School Press, 2000. The market for business knowledge is booming as companies looking to improve their performance pour millions of pounds into training programmes, consultants, and executive education. Why then, are there so many gaps between what firms know they should do and what they actual do? This volume confronts the challenge of turning knowledge about how to improve performance into actions that produce measurable results. The authors identify the causes of this gap and explain how to close it.
Plous S., The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, McGraw-Hill, 1993.
Proctor T., Creative Problem Solving for Managers, Routledge, 1999. This text provides an introduction to the ideas and skills of creative problem solving. It shows how and why people are blocked in their thinking, how this impairs the creative problem solving process and how creative problem solving techniques can help overcome these difficulties.
Rubin T., Overcoming Indecisiveness: The Eight Stages of Effective Decision Making, Harper & Row, 1985.
Russo J., and P. Schoemaker, Decision Traps: Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision-Making and How to Overcome Them, Fireside Press, London, 1990.
Wickham Ph., Strategic Entrepreneurship: A Decision-making Approach to New Venture Creation and Management, Pitman, 1998.
Zukav G., The Seat of the Soul, Simon & Schuster, 1999.
Zyman S., The End of Marketing As We Know It, Harper Collins, 2000. The author demonstrates why marketing is not an art but a science.

Decisions Concerning Personal Life

 Total quality begins with total personal quality, organizational empowerment begins with individual empowerment, and managing information system (MIS) means managing your life. The same decision-making process one faces in business arises in all other aspects of one's life, but they are obscured in other parts of life because they are not overlaid with as many complexities that arise in business. If you expect people who do not treat themselves well to treat the world well, you will be sorely and surely disappointed.

In Lee Iacocca's words:

Over the years, many executives have said to me with pride: "Boy, I worked so hard last year that I didn't take any vacation." I always feel like responding, "You dummy. You mean to tell me you take responsibility for an $80 million project and you can't plan two weeks out of the year to have some fun?"

Business decision-making is a simple arena of choices expressed in dollar terms, and that simplicity is the reason for discussing the decision-making process in the context of business, though it can apply elsewhere just as well. Values, ethics, means, and social complexity must enter into the decision-making process along with the monetary evaluation such as cost-and-benefit analysis.

We all know the difference between "right" and "wrong", and we can tell "good from "bad". But we also know that the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest decisions of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.

Many people believe that predetermined destiny rather than their own decisions govern the affairs of their lives. Personal mastery teaches us to choose. Choosing is a courageous act that entails opting for various courses of actions that will define one's destiny. Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. Striving for goals (i.e., the objective of your decisions) that do not reflect your values and consequently do not make your life joyful is how we make ourselves unhappy. But if you do not know what you want, then how will you know how to achieve it? Have a very clear picture of what you want out of life and what it will take to get it. There is a popular, classic song in which a raspy female voice exclaims to her independent female audience, "use what you got.....to get what you want."

Be realistic about your abilities. When there is a way, there is a will. The opposite is not true as many people unfortunately believe and have taken as the basis for decisions concerning their personal life. Thinking about strategies to strive after that are beyond your abilities can ruin your life. If a goal is unattainable and you go after it anyway, the consequential failure may cause you pain and diminish your energy (and resources of the organization). You do best in your profession and your personal life by doing well with respect to your capacity and values rather than trying to do better than another person or organization. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it. Remember that, if you are attempting the impossible, you will fail; therefore ask what is possible for you.

He knows not his own strength that has not met challenge. When you are facing a decision, then you are sounding-out the depth of your own strengths and the richness of your resources. One is responsible for one's own life. Passivity provides no protection: One must accept responsibility for a decision before one can make any decision.

All religions, arts, philosophy, morality, and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations have pondered the search for what constitutes a good life. Yet only in the last decades has the study of well-being become a scientific endeavor. The results indicate that the goals and values of personal life are very subjective and mostly cultural. Most people spend a lifetime searching for happiness. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is that the only place they ever needed to search was within. Moreover, once a doctrine, however irrational, has gained power in a society, millions of people will believe in it rather than feel ostracized and isolated.

One must decide for oneself: Leaders and followers face different problems. The leaders have to wonder if the followers will follow them faithfully and the followers wonder if the leader will bring them to the "promised land". In essence, the leaders and the followers are slaves to each other's needs.

There are many factors that contribute to being a good decision-maker, the cardinal ones are:

  1. Self-esteem (not pride): Self-esteem is a big factor in making good decisions. Some people easily pressured into doing things by others are easily told what to do because they have very low self-esteem. Never feel sorry for yourself -- it has a deadly effect on your thinking. Recognize all problems, no matter how difficult, as opportunities for enhancement and/or affirmation of your life, and make the most of these opportunities. Creativity in making good decisions requires having a clear mind.
  2. Courage: Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared. Courage is to think for yourself. When one has low self-esteem one can be talked into doing almost anything because one depends on others too much for advice. This is all because one may not have strength and courage to listen to his/her own thoughts. There are many ways to escape from your own strategic thinking engagement. For example, have you asked yourself why you read newspapers? Could it be an escape device? As a reporter puts it "Fact that is fact every day is not news; it's truth. We report news, not truth." It may be a shock to most of us that, Thomas Jefferson said, "I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it." You ought to never try to avoid the duty of making up your mind for yourself. If you do not make decisions for yourself, others do it for you: "You're legally allowed to drink now so we figured the best thing for you was a car."

    Of all the gifts that a parent can give a child, the gift of learning to make good choices is the most valuable and long lasting. It is the nature, and the advantage, of courageous people that they can take the crucial questions and form a clear set of alternatives. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.

    It takes education and courage to gain more self-esteem to be positive or confident in decision-making. Listen to yourself and think for yourself. This won't get you into trouble because of someone else. Courage means the act of intelligent risk taking while looking forward into the future. Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dare, as something inside them was superior to circumstance in making their decisions.

  3. Honesty: Honesty is to be the one you are. Be objective about yourself and others. It is important to identify your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Being honest with yourself is the most important thing you can ever do. When it comes to yourself, you have to be brutally honest.
  4. Love: Love means caring about yourself and other people. It means that you go to sleep at night knowing that your talents and abilities were used in making decisions that, served others. The wonderful thing about love is that it embraces, without binding.

To be honest, you must fully accept that at this moment, you can only be what you are. No more, no less; however, with the inevitable passing of each moment of time, you will gradually, but surely change -- to become more or less, better or worse, stronger or weaker. Your choice is the direction of change: it is yours alone. The only true competition is the rivalry within your changing self. It is the very basis of a good decision making.

Hard Decisions: Only you can change your life. No one can make decisions for you when it comes to serious questions, such as, What ought I to do?, What should I believe?, What can I know?, How should I live? What Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us is that the only good answers to such questions are personal and examined ones, rarely those adopted by large groups; conscious, reasoning minds should neither pray to strange Gods, nor encourage the vanities of the self. That alone can set us on the path to freedom. All the interest of your education should come together to make decisions for yourself. What is the use of education if you cannot face these questions to your own satisfaction? While you are making these decisions, you feel for the time being that your life is your own. Do not envy others, because who envies others does not obtain peace of mind. Everything starts with yourself -- with you making up your mind about what you're going to do with your life.

The more amiability and esprit de corps among the members of a policy-making in-group, the greater is the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against out groups.

Major decisions require courage. We must have courage to bet on our decisions, to take the calculated risk, and to act.

Finally, in personal decision-making there is no one better to talk to than yourself if you really want to get things worked out. No other person has as much information about your problems, and no one knows your skills and capabilities better.

Self-Realization: Maslow's work specifies that individuals have a hierarchy of needs ranging from basic needs for survival and safety to higher-level needs for esteem and self-actualization, as shown in the following figure:

Hierarchy of Needs Described by Maslow

  1. Physiological Needs: These are primarily biological needs. They include such things as the need for adequate nutrition, shelter, warmth and medical care.
  2. Safety Needs: After physiological needs, the second most compelling needs that individuals face are safety and security.
  3. Belongingness and Love Needs: When physiological and safety needs have been addressed, the next set of needs -- those related to belongingness, affection and love -- can emerge.
  4. Esteem Needs: If the first three needs are fulfilled, the need for esteem may become dominant. This refers both to self-esteem and to the esteem a person gets from others.
  5. Self-Actualization Needs: The highest level of needs, those that individuals are able to satisfy when all other more basic needs have been met, is the need for self-actualization. Self-actualization is a person's need to be what he/she is. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
What does Maslow mean by his observation with respect to self-realization? My answer is: If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that everybody will have to pause and say, Here lived a great sweeper, who swept his job well.

Popular Strategies in Avoiding Personal Decisions: Decisions shape our personal lives, however decision-making can be a stressful, bewildering personal responsibility. Decidophobia is the fear of making your own decisions. The comparison and choice of goals and standards arouses the most intense decidophobia but the only way to ensure stability in the strategic thinking is to engender fear. In the past few decades, the field of decision-making has concentrated on showing the limitations of decision makers - that is, that they are not very rational or competent and their thoughts are clouded with a plethora of possibilities, variables and outcomes. In short, there is the lack of a well-focused structured decision-making process.

The following strategies or combination of them enable decidophobes to avoid making their own decisions.

Further Readings:
Baumeister R., Escaping the self: Alcoholism, Spirituality, Masochism, and Other Flights From the Burden of Selfhood, New York, Basic Books, 1991.
Bernstein P., The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession, Wiley & Sons, 2000. Presents the history of how some people obsessed, haunted by wealth. Gold had them, rather than the other way around.
Diener E., and E. Suh, (eds.), Culture and Subjective Well-Being, MIT Press, 2000.
Feeney D., Motifs: The Transformative Creation of Self, Praeger, 2001.
Freud S., Civilization and Its Discontents, J. Strachey (editor), Norton & Co., New York, 1999.
Greenberg J., Pyszczynski T., and S. Solomon, The causes and consequences of self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. Baumeister (Ed.), Public Self and Private Self, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1986.
Kaufmann W., From Decidophobia to Autonomy: Without Guilt and Justice, A Delta Book, 1975.
Klein G. Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, MIT Press, 1999.
Maslow A., D. Stephens, and G. Heil , Maslow on Management, Wiley, 1998.
Reichley J., The Values Connection, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.
Reynolds V., and R. Tanner, The Social Ecology of Religion, Oxford Univ. Press, 1995.
Warren S., and A. Thompson, Dumped!: A Survival Guide for the Woman Who's Been Left by the Man She Loved, Harpercollins, 1999.

Problem of Determination of Values and Rank among Values

Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for. Which one of the following fits your value system? The major value in life is what you get, OR the major value in life is what you become.

Setting a Clear Goal: What is it you want to accomplish? Strangely enough, many decision-makers collect a set of alternatives (say cars to buy or person to marry) and then ask, "Which should I choose?" without thinking first of what their goals are, what overall objective they want to achieve. Next time you find yourself asking, "What should I do? What should I choose?" ask yourself first, "What are my goals?"

Know Your Values and Preferences: Value refers to how desirable a particular outcome is, the value of the alternative, whether in dollars, satisfaction, or other benefit. However, preference reflects the philosophy and moral hierarchy of the decision-maker. Personal values determine the preferences. Some people prefer excitement to calmness, taking too much risk to a calculable risk, efficiency to esthetics, quality to quantity, and so on.

It is not hard to make good decisions when you know what your values are. However, a question that has inspired many theories conveys the impression that the numerous theories of values and valuation are deeply heterogeneous, some being rational and some irrational, some seeing values as the mere effect of social inculcation, others the effect of emotional factors, as resentment. Moreover some theories attempt to derive values from self-interest, others from the constraints imposed by society on individuals.

Rational Choice Model: Rational theory deals with one of the major "rational" theories used today to explain norms and values: the so-called "Rational Choice Model". In the expression "Rational Choice Model" the word rational is used in an indigenous fashion, as an equivalent of "instrumentally rational." An action is "rational" in this sense if it can be held as representing objectively a good way of reaching the goal the subject is following. While its supporters see it as a potentially universally valid theory, in other words as the only one actually able to explain indistinctly all human activities, this claim seems ungrounded.

Relativistic vs. Naturalistic Theories: The interest and limits of these theory deal with the question of which values should be considered as the emanation of singular cultures and, for this reason, vary from one culture to another. These models are dominant today because they defend a relativistic view of values and treat the perception people have of the reasons as to why they endorse such and such values as illusory. Some opponents of the relativistic theories have instead a naturalistic theory of values. It takes its inspiration from sociobiology.

Axiological Rationality: Axiological rationality was studies by Weber in distinction between axiological rationality and instrumental rationality. The instrumental rationality deals with the relations between means and ends, the notion of axiological rationality introduces the idea of a non-consequential type of rationality. This idea can be presented as a sequential type of rationality rather axiological rationality. The explanation of axiological feelings is concerned with the cases where social actors act in conformity with their values.

Cognitivist Model: Cognitivist model is a generalization of the Rational Choice Model which starts from the idea that the notion of rationality has two very different meanings: The sense of the concept in economics, and the philosophy of science. It implies that some irrational people can be interpreted rationally, provided the notion of rationality is adequately defined. It is also concerned with the development of the "judicatory" or "cognitivist" theory of rationality. The cognitivist model is also applied to the analysis of the feelings of justice in an attempt to apply the judicatory theory of values to a well-circumscribed field: the feelings of justice. Philosophers, such as Rawls, propose implicitly a theory as to what people mean when they perceive a distribution of goods as fair or unfair. They are in some circumstances Kantian (that is, they tend to follow principles of universal value), while they are rather in other circumstances utilitarian (That is, they tend to follow their interest and hold principles as valid provided they can consider them as serving their interest). Concepts such as "local justice" or "bounded justice" are concerned with building a bridge between reality and theory on the feelings of justice.

The following flowchart depicts the dynamic nature of the needs and values in personal decision-making process:

Dynamic Nature of Decision-Making Process

The above chart represents the needs and values causal connections in both space and time, by bring isolated facts from two primary and secondary sources together and help us construct a coherent understanding of the external world. This conditional knowledge is acquired from experience or learned and tie a flexible and highly interrelated network of links along which reasoning is possible and which can be applied to different decision making situations.

With respect to decision-making, instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be more accurate to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character, which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hotels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else.

As my reader noticed by now, the major problems for the scientists are the problem of determination of values and the assignment of ranks among the values.

The ultimate goal of human decisions is always the satisfaction of the acting man's desire, which is almost always "growth". There is no standard of greater or lesser satisfaction other than individual judgments of "values" and determination of "ranks" among those values. The values and their ranks are different for various people and for the same people at various times.

A potential problem is deciding the importance of the things you think about most of the time. The solution to this problem is to come-up with some criteria in evaluating the degree of the values you hold dear for achieving living well. We have to give meanings to our individual life, otherwise our lives are blank and senseless.

The first task in making private and personal decisions is to find out what the "values" are, for what? The answer is for the enhancement and affirmation of your life. Moreover, one must decide about the "ranks" among these values and their relation to the other values. The following is an ordered three-category model:

  1. Group A: This most important group includes all the things that you can do for yourself and no one else can do for you. Examples include "a good night's sleep", learning to think for yourself, and your health. As a Spanish proverb says, "A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools." You know it well that "Your health is your wealth." Remember that you will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

  2. Group B: The things which are yours and could not have been anybody else's. For example, your child belongs in this group.

  3. Group C: All other things. Such as your house, your job, etc.

Clearly, the question concerning what belongs to which group is highly subjective. For example, your job could become a member of group B if you like what you do and you believe no one else can do it as well as you do. Music the supreme form of all arts, for the composers belong to this group to amuse themselves in the first place. While the other forms of arts kept in the museums to amuse others too.

Further Readings:
Boudon R., The Origin of Values: Sociology and Philosophy of Beliefs, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J., 2001.
Hechter M., et al., The Origin of Values, A. de Gruyter, New York , 1993.
Keeney R., Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decision Making, Harvard University Press, 1992.
Nozick R., The Nature of Rationality, Princeton Univ. Press, 1994.
Rawls J., A Theory of Justice, Belknap Press, 1999.

Thinkable Decisions and the Economy of Strategic Thinking

What do artists do? They make models of reality that are more beautiful than reality itself in order to make our existence bearable. However, as Michelangelo once said, "A man paints with his brains and not with his hands." Moreover, a modeler of reality is an artist with constraints. A Japanese proverb says, "Thinking without action is a daydream. Action without thinking is a nightmare." Therefore, there are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did and those who did and never thought. The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

Speechless thought moves over the fibers of our brain like water over the face of the deep. That we think, we know because we think. That we are, we know because we think; but what is it to think? And what is it to know that we think? What happens when you let your mind wander? When human mind has nothing specific to think about, it becomes chaotic, flitting from one thought to another in a random way. That's why thinkers are more often in a good mood while thinking than they are in their free time.

When one faces a problem, one must always ask whether the problem is thinkable. Not every idea or concept is thinkable. Moreover, every thinkable idea deserves its own duration of time in your mind.

Our senses furnish the mind only with materials of information; it is our thinking that converts information we receive to our useful knowledge for decision making. Decision-making is described as the economy of thinking. There are six steps that must be considered in making a good decision. The steps are as follows:

  1. Is it thinkable? Is your problem thinkable?
  2. Is it my business? Is it really necessary for you to think about it? It seems like one of the hardest lessons to be learned in life is where your business ends and somebody else's begins. The moment a question comes to your mind, see yourself mentally taking hold of it and disposing of it. In that moment is your choice made. You learn to become the decider and not the vacillator.
  3. Do you have enough explicit information to start your strategic thinking? Information can be classified as explicit and tacit forms. The explicit information can be explained in structured form, while tacit information is inconsistent and fuzzy to explain. A good thinking resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
  4. How long should I think about it? The key is in not "spending" time, but in "investing" it. Thinking does not stay in some minds very long because unfortunately they do not like solitary confinement that is needed.

    Decision does not just happen; it takes reflection and thought. Reflection time must be built into the decision process allowing ample time to ponder and rethink. For many people, unfortunately, the expectation that responding immediately is far more important than responding thoughtfully for many.

  5. Implementation - taking action. Thinking without action is daydreaming. To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.
  6. Monitoring my action. Since everything changes, to be in control of my problem I have to adapt and update my thinking. The art of life is a constant readjustment to our situation.

Following the above thinking process with its many loops, then it is very likely that good ideas spring into being in response to your analytical probing. This analytical thinking is the most powerful tool for the mind. Without this, recurrence relation will keep coming back to your mind to haunt you.

Mind maintains, and holds whatever has been put on it during the last few minutes. It holds and works on it, unless we replace by something new. Therefore, in order not to think about what is not worthy one must start thinking about something else immediately. That is the hygiene for the mind.

The crux is noticed in Alices' Adventures in Wonderland: " ' How am I to get in?' asked Alice again, in a louder tone. 'Are you to get in at all?' said the Footman, 'That's the first question, you know.' "

Remember that most people waste most of their time every day majoring in minors. Time is of no account with great thoughts. Obviously, the basic problem is this: Law firms, which bill by the hour, are more profitable when less efficient. As Goethe said, "Things, which matter most, must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

If you work on a nonexistent problem there are much fewer obstacles to overcome. To accomplish something noteworthy, we should look to do something worth the effort unless we are trying to relax. In times of leisure, nonexistent problems usually need to be sought out!

Here is an example of an unthinkable question/problem. Is there an after life? This question is not thinkable. You must think about it as much as you think about "life before life." We can ask primal questions, but we can never stand near the beginning or the end.

In other cases, the questions are thinkable, however, one "wishes" not even raise any doubt about them that invoke strategic thinking. These cases include, e.g., our deepest beliefs. And in many cases, one even deliberately changes the perception of the problem in order that it suits ones preconceived desirable decision. This is unfortunate, but people lie much more to themselves than to others.

I studied the lives of relatively great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.

On the duration of the strategic thinking, Albert Einstein said, "I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

As a general rule for strategic thinking, if you cannot describe in writing to be understood by someone else about your decision problem and what you are doing as a process about it, then you do not know what you are doing. The best place to make a decision is on paper.

Being able to control the thought process is the hardest of all, and it takes discipline and training. One must develop the ability to engage in a consecutive, and a well-focused strategic thinking for a predetermined limited time in order produce a solution to a given well defined problem. It is not that things will necessarily go wrong (Murphy's Law), but rather that they will take so much more time and effort than you think, if they are not to. The cardinal aim is to uncover the underlying logical structure of the decision problem by means of a mathematical model. All branches of human knowledge are moving towards scientific representation. These include all the --logy subjects, such as sociology, and psychology, etc., usually being taught at our liberal art and humanity colleges. Nowadays, one expects a deeper understanding from studying sociometric, psychometric, and econometric, etc.

Students often ask me if, as a thinker, I was rational or creative. Left-brained or right-brained. I consider it, and ask in reply, do I have to choose? Is it possible to be both? I did not think I could afford to discriminate. You want to be good at designing a good solution strategy, and you need all the brainpower I had available.

Well-focused strategic decision-making is the act of simultaneous thinking. However, there is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

Remember that:
Birds fly; when they get tired, they land.
Man thinks; when he gets tired, he says "I understand."

Philosophy of Creation: The fundamental project in life is engaging with the central idea that being strives for creativity . There are various ways in which being affirms the unlimited creative power. Moreover it dissolves whatever might restrict or mediate its expression, including the organisms, objects, representations, identities, and relations that this power generates along the way.

Thinking could be dangerous: The following metaphor illustrates how in some cases people prefer to not think for fear of being disappointed, adhering to the saying that "ignorance is bliss". There was a boy who lived his whole life on an iceberg. One day, he wondered what could be under the ice. He decided to dig in to find out for himself. To his greatest disappointment he discovered that he was actually living on water. From that day on, he never felt comfortable living on the iceberg and he wished he had not asked himself that question.

Mastering your fears: The major obstacle that stops people from making their own decisions is fear of making wrong decision.

When one has fear there are two primary reactions: facing the problem courageously or avoiding any commitments. However, since one has a powerful ability to analyze and understand, one can overcome the fear by self-psychoanalysis techniques to cope with the flight instinct.

Top business performers have developed a multiple-step approach to conquering their fears. First, ask yourself a few important questions. Try to identify what you actually fear. Ask yourself what's the worst that can happen if you fail. Most of the time in business, it's either a fear of loss or a fear of embarrassment. Next, identify what you could gain if the task or strategy works out well. This positive vision helps overshadow the negative fear. Last, ask yourself what the price is to you and to others if you do not overcome this fear

There are two types of people: those who try, stumble and get up and try again, and those who fear stumbling and never even try. Guess which type is more successful.

Our stomach is wiser than our brain: When one eats too much, the stomach rejects it by throwing up. However, the brain has no such mechanism. While mind controls the body, unfortunately, it is unable to control or give order to itself. The main cause for this is our habits, which are the centers of the gravity of the mind. Habits are weighing our mind down and therefore they are shortcuts that become comfortable means to avoid thinking.

Process of thinking for yourself : Thinking for yourself has been valued ever since ancient time:

"If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself."
--- Confucius   

The critical thinking techniques enable us to evaluate arguments and question the quality of the reasoning that leads to a certain conclusion. Too often we accept what we see and hear, becoming passive absorbers of information rather than critical listeners or readers. We must guard our mind against adapting a belief as our own before examining the validity of arguments for or against. We should ask questions in order to reach our own personal opinion or decision including:

Unfortunately, pure uncritical thinking enables us to absorb a great deal of information and provides a foundation for more complex thinking at some future time. However, it is a passive exercise and, therefore, does not require an exhaustive mental effort, just concentration and memory skills. Clearly, this approach does not provide us with a method for discerning the facts, which could have serious consequences. Moreover, I am always fascinated by the way memory diffuses facts.

On the other extreme is the interactive approach to thinking that requires a "question-asking attitude" to determine the value of what is read and heard. If we are capable of thinking for ourselves, then the rewards are considerable and allows us to critically evaluate and then form personal opinions based on that evaluation of what makes sense and what is non-sense. We must also be aware that we bring our own personal experiences and values into the process and must not allow emotional involvement to taint our ability to think in an open-minded manner.

Further Readings:
Browne M., and S. Keeley, Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, Prentice Hall, 2000.
Gilbert K., and H. Kuhn, A History of Esthetics, Dover, New York, 1972.
Gigerenzer G., Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World, Oxford University Press, 2000.
Harel D., D. Kozen, and J. Tiuryn, Dynamic Logic, MIT Press, 2000. Among the many approaches to formal reasoning the dynamic logic has had the strongest impact on formal theories of knowledge.
Kim J., Supervenience and Mind, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993.
Sanitt N., Science As a Questioning Process, Inst. of Physics Pub., 1996. The author considers the connections and interplay of various scientific disciplines as well as their influencing a man and thinking about where we are and where to go.
Snell B., The Discovery of the Mind: In Greek Philosophy and Literature, Dover Pub., 1982.

What Is Man?

What is mind?       No matter.
What is matter?        Never mind!
- - Homer                            

The many debates over mind and matter cover much of the history of human thoughts. The main engaging question, prior to the age of Enlightenment was how a nonphysical (i.e., mind) causes a physical (e.g., movements)?

Both Spinoza and Freud among others, worked on the unity of mind and body together with their interaction with nature and society. The following chart depicts the psych-analysis of Freud and Spinoza hybrid model:

Unity of Mind and Body

Spinoza was the first to question the concept of mind-and-body, i.e., physical and nonphysical duality dominated humanity for over twenty centuries. He recognized that there is no such separation, but a manifestation of two different moods of the same thing. For example, when you have sufficient physical energy, then your mind registers it as feeling joyful. Anybody old enough has physical scars from all sorts of things. It is the same with the mind.

In the above chart, the interaction of humankind with nature, society, and self are depicted inside the triangle.

Humankind and Nature: Genetic engineering has shown how it is possible to splice genes from one animal to another and not just animals. So, are humans really that unique? And even if they are not, are they that special?

When one talks about humankind it is often with a tendency to separate man from the rest of animals. However, in reality there no such separation, the man is wholly nature not a kingdom within a kingdom. Humankind is not the crown and the hidden purpose of evolution.

According to the primatology, which has mounted ever more convincing bodies of evidence that there is really nothing special or unique about the human at all, that almost everything that you care to name is, to some degree or another, performed by other primates; it is all a matter of degree. And so, rather than distinct categories primatologists would rather have shifting shades of gray in the primate world and extend the term homo to a much broader population.

Nature of the Man: Man has no nature, but he has history. In man the creature and the creator are one. While man is still undetermined animal, he is the strongest of all animals.

What Nietzsche realized was that man must understand that life is not governed by rational principles. Life is full of cruelty, injustice, uncertainty and absurdity. There are no absolute standards of good and evil which can be demonstrated by human Reason. There is only naked man living alone in a godless and absurd world. Modern industrial, bourgeois society made man decadent and feeble because it made man a victim of the excessive development of the rational faculties at the expense of human will and instinct.

The task is to rediscover beneath all flattering colors and make-up the frightful fixed-text homo natura, which means: To translate man back into nature; to become master over the many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted over that eternal basic text of homo natura. To bring it about that man shall henceforth stand before man as he now, hardened by the discipline of science, stands before the other forms of nature. He is, in truth, anything but the crown of creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at similar stages of development

Humankind and Society: When man found himself bounded within the wall of society, all his instinct had to be broken to be replaced by the social norms. However, not all the instinct gave up their demand easily. The two most pervasive of all are: Anger, and Reproduction. Man derives the highest pleasure from sexual fulfillment, says Freud, but unconstrained sexuality drains the individual of psychic energy needed for a creative and intellectual life. Hence, it was society, working through the family, the priest, the teacher and the police, who imposes rules and restricts our animal nature which, because it is animal, demands release. Such an existence is painful and so causes anxiety and frustration. But the violation of the rules of civilization also gives us guilt. Either way, we suffer torment and pain. Civilized life simply entails too much pain for people. It seemed, for Freud, that the price we pay for civilization is neuroses. Man has to find some sublimated means of satisfying the instinct. For example, our sexual fulfillment is allowed by means of engaging in e.g., "Passionate-dancing", which is accompanied by the feeling and imagination of making love in bed but vertically. There are many other "acceptable means" for sexual fulfillment, such as sexual virtual-reality as a substitute for the real-reality.

Humankind and the Self: We are particularly interested in the relation between anthropology and psychology. The difficulty of the Anthropology is how to articulate an analysis of what Homo Natura is on the basis of a definition of man as subject of liberty. More specifically, in its pragmatic character, the Anthropology aims to study what man makes of himself. So the realm of its investigation will neither be morality, metaphysics, nor the society, but what makes man, -- or what he can and should do of himself. Foucault observed that even though the anthropology posits man neither as homo natura nor as subject of freedom, but rather as he is given within the already operating syntheses of his relation with the world, i.e. as a citizen of the world, he/she then goes on to understand the dynamic of the inner sense.

Nature proceeds throughout the whole infinite series of its possible determinations without outward incentive; and the succession of these changes is not arbitrary, but follows strict and unalterable laws. Whatever exists in Nature necessarily exists as it is. Nature's relation to human beings is neutral while human's relation to nature is very complex process and yet undetermined. Consider for example in the animal kingdom, all creatures are striving to eat, survive, and reproduce. However, when it comes to man, he wonders and hopelessly looking for hidden purpose "as if" nature has a purpose.

The following table contains the main instinctive drives constituting the wild animals’ life and the main personal and social decisions concerning humans’ life:

Instinctive Drives in Animals’ Life
    
Decisions Concerning Humans’ Life
To Survive
    
To Live ON, How?
To Eat
    
To Live WITH, Whom?
To Reproduce
    
To Live FOR, What?



A Distinction: Human has choices but not animal. This fact is, captured by artists, e.g., in The Animals in War Memorial, which is situated at London's Hyde Park. This sculpture by David Backhouse depicts all the animals that have been used by troops in wartime, from horses and mules to dogs, elephants, camels, canaries and even glowworms.


Click on the imageto enlarge it.
Animals in War: They Had No Choice

Further Readings:
Fernandez-Armesto F., Humankind: A Brief History, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Freud S., Civilization and its Discontents, trans. and ed., James Strachey, W.W. Norton, New York, 1961
Mulhauser G., Mind out of Matter: Topics in the Physical Foundations of Consciousness and Cognition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. An answer to the question: What I am? is given as: The self as a dynamic data structure implemented within a cognitive framework by a functional system.
Schrodinger E., What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell and Mind and Matter, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992.

How the Mind Works: From Deciding to Action

What is mind?       No matter.
What is matter?        Never mind!
- - Homer                            

The many debates over mind and matter cover much of the history of human thoughts. The main engaging question, prior to the age of Enlightenment was how a nonphysical (i.e., mind) causes a physical (e.g., movements)?

Behavioral and Brain Sciences: It is a fact that humankind use crude information, such as colors, sounds, etc., in the environment in order to behave in a certain way. When forms of energy we call "stimuli" impinge on us our response begins. Creating an inner copy of the information, which is a representation of reality, does this. However this representation is at the service of the "will" in determining our behavior.

In recent years there have been more interesting studies on the static geometry, i.e., the anatomy of the brain, leading to important testable predictions. However, the valuable progress in the brain/mind problem should be a comparative study in discovering relations between the physical dynamical structures generated by brain activity and the mental/conceptual structures. This includes the topology of subjective time and its alterations in psychopathology.

The brain is made up of billions of nerve cells. The portion of the brain responsible for thought and memory consists primarily of nerve cells, or neurons. Each neuron has three parts, dendrites (inputs), a cell body, and an axon (output) as shown below:

Neurons Are Responsible for Thought and Memory
Neurons Are Responsible for Thought and Memory

The dendrites connect to the axons of other neurons. When these other neurons are stimulated, the dendrites convey the signal to the cell body via a synapse or connection, which either excites or inhibits the neuron with a different strength for each synapse:

A Snapshot of a Synapse
A Snapshot of a Synapse

When the excitation sufficiently outweighs inhibition, the neuron "fires". This sends a signal down its axon, which in turn excites or inhibits other neurons, and perhaps causes a muscle to move.

For at least three reasons, we are interested in knowing how our mind works:

  1. Better decisions are made by knowing the mechanism of our mind.
  2. Happiness or unhappiness are the states of mind.
  3. A better understanding of the mind can lead to setting new priorities as to what is taught/learned.

Mind is what your brain does consciously, recall the often used phrases such as: never mind!, mind the gap, or mind your own business. A strategic thinking process is a neural network process inside our brains through many functional layers. The following figure depicts the brain and mind functionality:

Chains of Thought

The focal point of practical reasoning is action, as the focal point of empirical reasoning is observation. Perceptual takings or 'judgments' are the thoughts which typically arise from the impact of the world on our mind through our sensory capacities.

Consciousness thinking is self-knowledge, that is, knowing what you know. Moreover, the process of becoming conscious distributes what you know throughout your brain via the brain neural network branches, i.e., chains of thought. Unlike the connectivity between only two nodes of the network (what we call memorizing), the availability, and therefore expansion, of what you know throughout your neural network branches makes the information processing of your brain accurate. Thus, you possess a reflective, brilliant mental model of reality. However, one must be cautioned that the way we choose to see the world (i.e., modeling) creates the world we see.

It is necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, and your knowledge into a mental model. Your duty is whether the model is true or false, whether it represents reality rationally. Unfortunately, it might be a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often than not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew.

Human beings are basically electrochemically driven membrane processes. We take in oxidant and fuel, we change the form of it, things move through membranes, and we oxygenate our blood - that's how nature works.

Neural connections, shown as the functional layers in the above figure, are formed in the brain at very early times in development, and at first they are present in an immature pattern of wiring that only grossly approximates the adult precision. In order for the adult pattern of connections to form, neural function is necessary. The adult brain consists of about 1 trillion (1012)-nerve cells, each connected to at least 20,000 other cells. The possible combinations are greater than the number of molecules in the known universe. Each neuron makes a very stereotyped set of connections with specific partner neurons. Unlike common belief that our mind works like a computer, a useful analogy is to think of nerve cells as rather like a telephone system. Our brains employ a mixture of chemical and electrical signals to send and receive phone calls within the brain. Each nerve cell sends a long process, an axon-like a phone line- to connect itself to other cells that can be located the equivalent of hundreds of miles away. The brain contains well over 1,000 trillion connections.

Learning can be defined as: The process of connectivity of the nodes within your neural network of the brain. The mind is like the stomach. It's not how much you put into it, but how much it digests. Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns. During brain connectivity development (i.e., education), all these connections have to be formed from scratch-nerve cells are made in different places in the brain by undergoing many successive cell divisions. Then each cell has to spin out its long process towards the appropriate target neurons.

The process is much like stringing phone lines from one city to another-between New York and Philadelphia, for instance. First, trunk lines between the two cities must be laid down. Then, phones at specific addresses within each city need to be wired so that when a specific phone number is dialed, only that phone rings and not the wrong numbers.

The brain first sets down a basic framework of circuits-rather like trunk lines according to strict circuit diagrams determined by a genetic blueprint. Then, long before the adult precise circuits are formed, the "switch" is turned on: brain function itself completes the wiring process by running test patterns on the circuits, thereby selecting correct connections and eliminating errors. Using the phone analogy, it is as if, once the trunk lines are strung between two cities, the first set of phone calls to be placed cause many phones to ring because many connections, including the correct ones, are formed initially. Then, a process of error-correction occurs, in which phoning it eliminates the incorrect connections and strengthens the correct ones.

Special early cell types in the brain place these molecules in specific combinations and locations, and they are sensed molecularly by the growing axon tips of "pioneer" neurons as they spin out the first connections. Once these early connections are formed, neural function begins and neurons signal to each other by sending chemical-electrical signals over their long distance connections. In the phoning process itself, the frequent use of connections strengthens them with rewards of special nerve growth factors and other signaling molecules. The inappropriate use of wrong connections causes their elimination. It is in this second phase of wiring where experience of the world can have a profound influence on the selection and maintenance of connections.

This observation forms the basis for the classic model of the critical period for brain development. Because different parts of the brain mature at different rates and times, neuroscientists believe there are different critical periods for different functions. A challenge for the future is to learn exactly what those periods are in terms of the specific development of brain circuits, for instance, for language acquisition, or reading.

An initial activity-independent step in which the basic framework of connections is constructed strictly according to the genetic blueprint, followed by a step in which brain function selects and refines from a wealth of possible connections. This second step is a prolonged period that experience can profoundly influence the important details of brain circuitry.

There are just not enough genes to account for the incredible precision of connectivity present in the adult brains (over 1,000 trillion connections). An elegant solution is to "hard wire" the trunk lines with specific molecular guidance clues, but then flip the switch to "on" early and let neural function make the final decisions. And this flexibility in final decision- making, after all, is what lets us adapt to our environment. For example, the brain does not know if it is going to have to learn English, Spanish, or Japanese after birth. An elegant solution to the wiring problem is to establish the fundamental framework of language circuitry using strict molecular mechanisms and then sculpt out the details depending on specific experiences after birth. Without this superb flexibility, we could not learn or remember or adapt to our environment-in short, those properties that make us uniquely human.

Not much useful theory has been developed to explai