Ideas and claims about decision making (collected edition)

A collection of ideas and claims published earlier on this blog. Clicking the picture will lead you to the original post.

Obvious solutions have already been found. However, they can be based on assumptions that do not hold. Questioning those assumptions is an effective means to developing new creative solutions.

Being creative at Systems Thinking Applied meeting.

If one doesn't know what she's after, she may well end up in wrong places.

Structure of the system in which one is acting determines the effects of her decisions. What should fundamentally matter, are the consequences to things that one values.

Career related choices are among the most important decisions for young educated people.

Decision making should be value-focused. Structuring values may help at becoming a better decision maker.

Should you make the decision now or delay it? 

Decision trees provide a valuable tool for structuring one's thinking about a decision. The ease of reversing a decision plays a major part in deciding how to deal with electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

Importance is only half of what should count in prioritization. 

Studying while working may enable better learning.

Threats to educational equality in Finland can be analyzed by considering the likelihoods and impacts of those threats.

Questioning assumptions related to basic education might lead to some big improvements in quality of learning!

Some creative value-focused thinking going on in Finland: http://qz.com/367487/goodbye-math-and-history-finland-wants-to-abandon-teaching-subjects-at-school/

Why we do basic education? Because we want our children to learn skills and gain knowledge about different phenomena.

Some people seem to have been thinking about the useful question: Why teach by subject? 

“Finland is considering its most radical overhaul of basic education yet—abandoning teaching by subject for teaching by phenomenon.”

And arrived at some conclusions:

Improve your creativity - begin with why

The obvious solutions to most problems have already been found. However, they are often based on assumptions that do not hold. 

The question 'Why?' is an effective means to questioning those assumptions.

Two main types of assumptions are: 

• Assumptions about values, objectives, goals - the reasons behind doing things.
• Assumptions about how the world works. Whenever you ask “why should we assume that?” or “why is that so?” and do not get a satisfactory response, there might be something wrong with those assumptions.

It’s not hard to create something but it can be very hard to be creative. In the sense, that you would develop something novel, feasible and useful. I believe that using the question 'Why?' more would help us at achieving this creativity.

Illustration:

Question:  “Why should the lecturer use powerpoint slides?”

Response: “Because that is how lectures are given, to give visual learning aid for students, to provide easily accessible course material, to have a structure for what he is going to present” etc.

Q: “Why lectures have to be given that way?”

R: “Ehm…?”

Creativity point: Lecture do not have to be given that way. What is more, giving lectures is actually not an objective at all. It is just one possible way to try and achieve learning.

Q: “Why is it important to give visual learning aid?”

R: “Because it makes learning cognitively easier”

Creativity point: OK. What other means there would be to deliver even better visual learning aid for the students? Could the lecturer use more informative pictures?

People tend to make quick assumptions intuitively and to accept the narrow framing they are given. This might have been necessary in our evolution so that we could survive. However, stepping out of this 'System 1 thinking' might enable you to be more creative.

My advice is to start using the question 'why' more often. Use it until you understand what you are dealing with. After this, you should be equipped to come up with creative solutions.

Me discussing creativity with value-focused thinking at
Systems Thinking Applied meeting in Ruoholahti.

How are Systems thinking and Value-focused decision making related?

The idea behind systems thinking is to view problems as systemic phenomena. System is a whole consisting of parts and their interrelations.  To effectively solve a problem one must understand the system around it. The better one understands the system, the more capable she is at developing an effective intervention.

The basic idea in value-focused decision making is that decision making should begin by identifying our values instead of our options. We choose between our options to best achieve what we value. Therefore, we should not narrow our thinking to the options given to us, but think creatively about what would be the best ways to achieve the things that we value.

Helping a friend with value-focused thinking

Last spring I simultaneously worked as an assistant for and took the course ’Value-Focused Thinking and Decision Making’ by Professor Ralph Keeney from Duke University who was visiting Aalto University.

One of the homework assignments for the course was to select a good friend outside the class and to have an in-depth discussion with her about her values related to some important decision she will be facing soon. I had my discussion with Kati and it was about her values related to choosing where to work after she would graduate.

I promised to Kati that I would compile the results and later present them to her in a nice format. This took some time but I got it finally done. I thought the resulting material were quite nice so I asked her if it’s okay to share them on my blog. Thanks for letting me do that Kati!