Comments on: The Importance of Thinking about Thinking

By: Black Magic

Black Magic — Sat, 01 May 2010 14:37:47 +0000

I really do like Lehrer’s writing style and enjoy his work.

By: Ellie

Ellie — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:19:23 +0000

Thanks for those meeting strategies! I am definitely going to have to try those out.

By: Ellie

Ellie — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:17:37 +0000

My favorite deck is a red/white one.

I really appreciate constructive criticism. Film school really grilled in its necessity for me. Everyone was a bit overly nice though. I never had to deal with actual negativity.

I even noticed myself fighting my instant rebuttals doing the rewrites on this article. :)

By: Ellie

Ellie — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:58:23 +0000

Thanks again for the recommendation Brett. I think we have plenty of real cheese. It’s just all in that obnoxious blister packaging that can’t be opened without industrial scissors ;)

By: Hilary Davis

Hilary Davis — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:10:07 +0000

Thanks for this post, Ellie – it was a nice break away from the constant momentum of work! And a great reminder to reflect on why we do the things we do the way we do them. It reminds me of a LLAMA webinar I attended last year with Pat Wagner as the presenter. She focused on the importance of reflecting on why plans fail and encouraged asking hard questions when bad things happen to our well-intentioned plans. Her advice for any major project was to build in time and money for reflection, getting everyone on board, giving people time to think, ask questions, take breaks, celebrate small successes along the way, repair from getting burned out, and limit doing work under crisis to minimize mistakes. In another LLAMA webinar, also led by Pat Wagner, she discussed decision-making strategies and focused on what she called ways to “neutralize data for decision-making.” She described using “graphic models” (grids and T-bars) to avoid cognitive bias. In group settings, she recommended setting up a T-bar chart on a whiteboard so that everyone can keep track of what’s been discussed (and avoid redundant comments) with costs of making a certain decision on one side and benefits of making a certain decision on the other side. Start with the negatives (costs) first to allow the criticisms to be aired, then go through and list benefits without making value judgments yet on either costs or benefits. Then, weigh the results before deciding, making sure to distinguish between facts and opinions. How often do we actually use a cost/benefit ratio when making group decisions or individual decisions? This post gives us concrete examples of how we can make better decisions and I’d recommend this post to anyone thinking about how to develop better personal or professional leadership skills.

By: Derik Badman

Derik Badman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:05:45 +0000

Oh, the hours I spent playing Magic (I preferred blue).

If there’s one thing I learned from four years of art school, it was how to take negative feedback and learn from it. It’s something that I’ve learned (the hard way) that most people don’t have. They take negative criticism as attacks, but you can only go so far with “that’s great”.

The thinking about/analyzing your emotions section is very similar to what I’ve been reading in some books on Zen (particularly by Brad Warner).

By: Brett Bonfield

Brett Bonfield — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:09:59 +0000

I first read about Lehrer's book when Joe Posnanski, a writer for Sports Illustrated, reviewed it on his blog. He summarized Lehrer's description of an experiment comparing rats to Yale students that reminded me of my experiences providing reference services to students at another Ivy League university:

Scientists put rats in a T-shaped maze and put food at one of the top corners of the T. They put the food on the left side 60 percent of the time and food on the right side 40 percent of the time. What they found is that once the rats realized that the food was on the left more often, they ALWAYS went left, figuring in their own rat minds that more often than not, they would get food. But when they did a similar experiment with Yale undergraduates — I’m not sure what they use as a reward for Yale undergraduates — barbecued Fritos? — they found something else. The students also came to realize that the reward was on the left most of the time, but they tried to figure out the pattern. There WAS no pattern, but their brains simply could accept that and so instead of going left and simply getting the reward 60 percent of the time, they tried to outsmart the system. And so they only ended up with the reward 52% of the time. As Lehrer says — outsmarted by rats.

Maybe this explains why the same brilliant, high achieving students and faculty members were repeatedly frustrated by pretty similar searches. It wasn't that they didn't know how to get to or use Business Source Premier or Factiva or the various execrable Thomson Reuters databases -- they just didn't believe the cheese could be found in the same place over and over again. At least that's one explanation. It's also possible they were after real cheese and often the best we had to offer was Velveeta.