Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller, Blink, begins with the memorable story of art experts asked to determine whether a magnificent example of a kouros, a sculpture of a striding boy, was genuine. Several of the experts had a strong visceral reaction in their gut. They believed it was a fake. But they were not able to say what it was that made them uneasy.
Their decision was a classic case of intuition. The experts knew it was a fake but didn’t know how they knew that. Those who read the story and the book might have come away with an almost magical view of intuition. That would be a wrong conclusion for later in the book Gladwell reveals that he does not hold that position. So how did the experts recognize it was a fake?
Not magic
Expert intuition actually involves both fast, intuitive thinking (system 1) and slow, deliberative, more logical thinking (system 2). In that first phase, a plan or tentative decision comes to ...
Assessing magic
As Daniel Kahneman writes in Thinking Fast and Slow, we’ve inherited some types of memory from our ancestors. Specifically, we “know” when to be afraid. And we tense up when we come into those situations. But what does it take to acquire expert intuition?
There are all kinds of business consultants, coaches and “experts” on the web, writing blogs and commenting. What can be galling is their sense of confidence. Confidence is the consequence of two related impressions: cognitive ease and coherence. We are liable to be confident when the story we tell ourselves—and others—comes to mind easily, with no contradiction and no competing scenario. But remember this: the ease with which a person proposes solutions and the fact that the solution makes sense does not guarantee that the proposal is true. The problem with ease and coherence is the firm belief in “what you see is all there is (WYSIATI).” The questions that need to be in the front our lobes regarding expertise are two: what am I missing, and what don’t I know? Most of the time it’s very important not to trust anyone’s judgment, and that includes yourself. Skepticism can go a long way toward making effective decisions.
Evaluating intuition
When you have need for expertise, whether internally or from a consultancy, how do you go about evaluating the expertise of a person? The answer comes out of skill learning and the processes of deliberate practice:
- When the environment in which a person has worked is regular enough to be predictable.
- When the person has had an opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged, deliberate practice.
Don’t get sucked into the notion of experience. What you want to know is the kind of experience the person has had and whether it’s “regular.” Some environments and work situations are profoundly irregular and the tasks in which the person has been involved rarely have a simple solution. I’d be very skeptical of “experts” from those situations.
FYI for consultants: Clients pay a lot of attention to consultants who reject conventional wisdom and “tell the truth” when asked to take on a project in which they lack expertise. I’ve worked on projects in which I did not have the expertise. After my first few years of consulting naiveté, I was very upfront about that lack. I have a number of clients to whom I’ve said, “Look, I’ve had no experience that I trust in taking on this project. I think I can do it, but I’m not certain. But I’m not willing to commit to it without a lot of support from you. And I don’t know what I don’t know about this project.” The majority of clients have gone ahead and asked me to work on the project. They wanted “my brainpower.” One of them consistently asked whether I thought there was a 60% chance of success. I was usually able to say yes to that—and that was all he wanted. Some of the projects have been completed partially. Some have been fully successful. And I have withdrawn from a couple when I decided either it wasn’t going to work or I couldn’t bring it off. In all of those instances I was paid handsomely and kept my reputation.
I’m unaware of others advocating such an approach, but honesty, integrity and your reputation ride on such relationships. That kind of honesty always pays off, even if you don’t get the job as a result of your openness.
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Be aware that business is light years behind medicine at this point in time. We business people are at the place today where medicine was in the 1950s. My physicians, for example, will inevitably tell me whether or not a prescription or a change in behavior is going to work. A couple years ago I asked a surgeon about some minor surgery. His response was telling. He said there was a good possibility that it would “solve my problem, but there are no guarantees.” It was a success.
In sum, it’s not easy to assess expertise from either an insider or an outsider. Insiders have a track record and a number of trusted recommendations can be surfaced. But outsiders are a different animal so you want to be cautious and skeptical.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow. (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux), 2011.
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