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Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions | 
 enlarge | Author: Gary Klein
Publisher: The MIT Press
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
Buy New: $16.39
You Save: $11.61 (41%)
New (40) from $16.39
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 37585
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 348
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 5.9 x 0.5
ISBN: 0262611465
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9780262611466
ASIN: 0262611465
Publication Date: February 26, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Gary Klein studies decision-making in the field, tagging along with firefighters, standing by in intensive-care units, and watching chess masters play lightning-fast "blitz" games to learn how people make choices with time constraints, limited information, and changing goals. From this research, he and his associates have developed a theory of "naturalistic decision-making." Sources of Power essentially lends the validity of scientific research to techniques that many of us use every day. There's intuition, which is based not on instantaneous insight but on the rapid (perhaps even subconscious) interpretation of perceptual cues. There's mental simulation, a finely honed method of visualization. There's storytelling and metaphor, which enable decision-makers to devise meaningful frameworks and compare their present situations to previous events. Nobody is born with an inherent mastery of these and other techniques, Klein tells us, but we are all born with the capability to develop, through experience, the skill sets experts call upon to make good decisions.
Product Description
Anyone who watches the television news has seen images of firefighters rescuing people from burning buildings and paramedics treating bombing victims. How do these individuals make the split-second decisions that save lives? Most studies of decision making, based on artificial tasks assigned in laboratory settings, view people as biased and unskilled. Gary Klein is one of the developers of the naturalistic decision-making approach, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced.
Since 1985, Klein has conducted fieldwork to find out how people tackle challenges in difficult, nonroutine situations. Sources of Power is based on observations of humans acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions. In addition to providing information that can be used by professionals in management, psychology, engineering, and other fields, the book presents an overview of the research approach of naturalistic decision making and expands our knowledge of the strengths people bring to difficult tasks.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 How People Make Decisions and Lead Others September 30, 2008
Great book on decision making.
The Analysis of different occupations, like firefighting, nursing and the military are great subjects applicable to many disciplines, although not usually so time critical or so life critical.
The model seems very natural, easily observable and doesn't take the human factor away.
The book touches on leadership and communication often.
Besides the great stories, one of the best bits I will take away with me is the section on documenting the "Intent" of an operation.
Leaders should delegate and clearly communicate the boundaries of their "Intent" and should that fail, then a reconsideration of goals is needed.
Some chapters near the end wandered over old ground.
 Very interesting to know how we can improve efficiency in our decision process September 19, 2008
Having worked with customers on consulting engagements for evaluating options among different products and solutions I found many times we ended up picking the one we thought most likely with our first impression. This book provided me with some arguments to know why we thought so and that trusting our judgement could lead us to the same place after a structured selection process.
The book provides a model for decision making (the RPD - Recognition Primed Decision model) that experts use in time pressured situations (firemen chiefs, combat pilots, chess masters).
Reading it easy but it has many references so studying it could be burdensome.
I highly recommend the book if you liked Blink and if you want to be more efficient in making decisions without thinking trusting your judgement or intuition is a mistake.
Staple Fire Service Text June 4, 2008
I have taught in a College Fire Science program for nearly eight years and have not found a resource I thought was more fitting to use as an incident commander text. Many Incident Command System (ICS) resources talk about strategies, tactics, resource allocation, and organizational structure but, do not teach the student how understand how these decisions are made in an emergency.
Klein lays out how the mind of an Incident Commander (IC) works and explains why we make decisions the way we do. The students could benefit greatly by knowing what it looks like "back stage" of an IC's mind so as to form reasonable aspirations and expectation of themselves.
pOWERFUL cONCEPT May 31, 2008
This book has some very powerful concepts that have yet to be widely taken up. Once you read the first chapter you will be hooked.
How decisions are really made November 7, 2007
Who should read this: Psychologists, Cognitive researchers, those looking for information on decision making processes (such as user interface designers)
In a nutshell: instead of long meetings, exhaustive review of options, evaluation and the "correct" approaches Klein makes clear there are two major "sources of power" in his "Recognition-Primed Model" (RPD):
1. Intuition (Pattern Matching)
2. Mental Simulation
This should "bury the lead" for anyone looking for quick fix in making their own decisions. This book is not another management process book full of suggestions and processes to make better decisions.
This book contradicts most of the "expert" approaches commonly presented for making decisions. It goes into deep detail, complete with many examples how people actually make major decisions in the real world providing the psychological basis for why they're used and why they work well (and why sometimes they don't).
For those, like myself, who want to know the details so we can apply them in our work (mine is web interaction design) the book is invaluable. It's full of research that contradicts the "orthodoxy" of how "decision making should be done." It's heavy on the cognitive research of effective decision making providing a lot of basic information that can be applied though not directly.
Klein reports the results from many of his own and others' studies of real time decision making, usually under pressure. The main subjects in those studies are firefighters, military commanders, pilots, medical professionals and chess grandmasters. The examples help underscore the statistical analysis and other analysis making what some of its textbook quality more enjoyable as well as accessible.
The chapter titles give a good sense of the specific topic areas analyzed and discussed in depth.
4. The Power of Intuition (and pattern matching)
5. The Power of Mental Simulation
7. Mental Simulation and Decision Making
8. The Power to Spot Leverage Points
9. Nonlinear Aspects of Problem Solving
10. The Power to See the Invisible (the nature of expertise)
11. The Power of Stories
12. The Power of Metaphors and Analogs
13. The Power to Read Minds (the nature of intent)
14. The Power of the Team Mind
15. The Power of Rational Analysis and the Problem of Hypperationality
16. Why Good People Make Poor Decisions
Example of the book's application:
I was lead to this book from Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think - A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" where he suggested this book shows how "field observation can reveal the difference between the way we think we do things and the way we actually do them." Having read both, I more fully understand the rationale for Krug's book (and title) since it are all about providing websites that are "intuitive" by using obvious web conventions that are easily recognized patterns that one quickly ignores as part of making decisions.
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