Beyond autopilot – how to disrupt automatic thinking to make better decisions

The difference between an entire organisations' success and failure can often be traced back to one decision. Like Blockbuster ignoring Netflix – a kind of "sliding doors" moment.

Making big decisions can feel daunting. Methods like agile or design thinking emphasise the importance of making a series of small decisions – steps of logic rather than leaps of faith. This is a great approach once we're aligned on our goals and clear on where we're headed.

Yet when it comes to really big decisions – strategic or complex decisions that underpin our purpose, direction and future success, we rarely have enough time to really think through the implications of what we're doing. So how can we make better decisions?

Thinking slow, thinking fast

Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman offers the notion that we have two ways of thinking. One is fast and automatic; the other is deliberate and calculating. Both of them are useful depending on the situation, but challenges occur when we apply automatic or fast thinking to challenges that are more complex than they initially seem.

We prefer thinking quickly over thinking slowly, mainly because thinking quickly is easier. In organisations, I see two examples of avoiding thinking slowly. The first is accompanied by an underlying frustration about things not going quickly enough. It leads to a temptation to "just get things done" or "not overcomplicate things". Fine for operations, disastrous for strategy. The second approach delays important decisions because "we need to do more research" or "we really need to make sure everyone is on board". In this case we might be avoiding thinking slowly at all.

Thinking Technology

The challenge of thinking slowly is that it's not something that comes naturally to us. Beyond electronic technology, thinking technology – methods or systems that help us get thing done – can help us apply ourselves to higher order, complex challenges.

Thinking technology includes frameworks of understanding that make it easier for us to work with complexity. It helps us leverage what we have to create more value. The approach of Human Centred Design is one example of thinking technology.

Thinking technology helps us make things explicit that might otherwise be implicit. By unpacking the frames and paradigms that shape how we understand the world and our current situation, it allows us to "make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar".

One way to think differently is to ask better questions. The "How Might We..." question provides a way to interrupt automatic thinking and encourage ourselves to consider what we're really trying to do. How might we... not how should we, or how must you – a template that enourages us to balance the desire to think quickly with the need to think slowly. It can be surprisingly challenging to formulate our challenge under one, single question, without jumping to a solution or advocating for a particular approach, while considering all points of view.

Disrupting our Thinking

Perhaps the most valuable application of thinking technology is its ability to interrupt our automatic thought patterns; to disrupt the default ways of thinking which we want to move beyond in order to think differently.

Like any technology, what counts is not having it but being able to apply it in a way that creates meaningful action in our current situation, and creates outcomes that align with our values and what's important to us.

"What counts is not having the technology – it's being able to apply it in a way that creates meaningful action"

Where is your thinking automatic when it needs to be considered? What thinking technology and what interventions do you need to make in order to set your organisation up for the future?

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