Gary Klein pioneered naturalistic decision making and the recognition-primed decision model. He wrote Sources of Power, The Power of Intuition and Snapshots of the Mind. We go back a long way, and I asked him about the cognitive side of uncertainty.
How we met
Gary and I met through the military. We start with a pilot’s problem: trying to land an F-4 with an A-6 mental model. Mental models shape what we see and do, in the cockpit and in business.
Sharing expertise
Experts have a hard time explaining what they know. Gary talks about teams and tactical decision games, and about ShadowBox, his method for training judgment when experts are not in the room. We look at wicked problems and the leader’s job of perspective taking.
Pre-mortems
Pre-mortems put cognitive diversity to work by asking a team to imagine a plan has already failed. Gary revisits the cognitive dimension through his book Snapshots of the Mind and shares a few thoughts on Six Sigma.
Gary’s work shows how experience shapes orientation, and how teams can borrow it from each other.
What does your best expert know that nobody has written down?
Listen and watch:
YouTube:
Apple Podcasts:
Spotify:
No Way Out on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/@nowayoutpodcast