Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

Created this summary for a friend shortly after the book was released. Thought I should post it for benefit of anyone considering the books. Rather than a review only of "Seeing ... ", it offers a perspective on all Klein's books, more detail on one. Page down to the end for "Seeing ... "Gary Klein is a social psychologist who has studied how people make decisions. Klein’s insights arise from exploring people’s stories on events. He does not stipulate or study how people should think, or how someone wants them to think, is open minded about the decision process, observing how it functioned in practice and whether the result was success or failure. To gain a sense of the significance of Klein’s work, read the book jacket comments by respected senior leaders. Klein’s work is academically rigorous; it is not academic. His research is directed at real world situations, real applications.Klein’s first book “Sources of Power” is a breakthrough in understanding real decision making in the face of challenge and adversity. “Sources” was the nucleus for the popular book “Blink” and Malcolm Gladwell praises Klein … “No one has taught me more about the complexities and mysteries of human decision-making than Gary Klein.” What makes the book powerful are insights from documented real life stories of decisions that illustrate learnings. “Sources of Power” is adapted from consulting studies, readable for the attentive. In the book Klein develops a workable theory behind intuition and how it is applied in practice to formulating real time rapid decisions. His method is to explore the stories … from firefighters, marine combat units, naval submarines, etc. and use them to understand the underlying thinking, developing the theory, and illustrating how this theory is generally applicable. His generalized mental model “Recognition Primed Decision Model” has widespread application. Simply put it involves comparing the current situation with previous experiences, recognizing how this is similar, analogous or different, spotting leverage points, and developing an accurate mental model (mental simulations as needed) for actions. There are process diagrams to help explain. Given the number of times we have seen “rational decisions” be adjusted by biases after the fact (flawed), looking at decision making through a different lens is refreshing. This is not a theory book; real stories tell the story. In reading the book I had two reactions: loved the stories and learned from them, loved the models to explain; the task was mine to translate this into more than a change in mindset to applying. Per Amazon score 5*.The second book “Intuition at Work” (softcover as “The Power of Intuition”) is a handbook of applications and decision tools for people involved in business decisions. It is a stand alone volume and serves as a useful guide for managers involved in strategic and tactical decisions. Rather than summarize, I offer an insert of the most useful tools (apologies for not condensing, written in 2008). 5*Thinking Tools (ref The Power of Intuition by Klein)not applicable in all situations or all forumsIntegrating Intuition (inductive) and Analysis (deductive)• Make a starting mental shift to intuition, a source knowledge from experience.• Accept there is zone of indifference when a fast or executable decision may be preferred over a perfect choice taking more time.• Map strengths / weaknesses of options without numbers or weights.• Use mental simulation to evaluate the options … how would/could these play out? Imagine worst case scenarios. If you have trouble, you lack sufficient experience or need more information. Use the PreMortem Exercise.(Method to help anticipate problems, worst cases, vulnerabilities for an option through mental simulation.)1. Preparation – familiarize with situation, relax, get ready to write.2. Tell people to imagine a reported total failure of plan/action.3. Generate reasons the failure could have occurred, 3-5 minutes.4. Consolidate lists - go around with each person stating an item until all new items are recorded. This reveals each person’s concerns.5. Revisit the plan or action proposed. Address top 2-3 items of greatest concern or if using this for a decision, apply ‘face off’.6. Periodically review the list to re-sensitize people to problems that may be emerging.• Simplify comparisons by ‘facing off’ one option to another to filter.• Bring in outside intuition to check analyses and test.• Don’t replace intuition with procedures. Intuition is not accidental; it represents experience and a system of procedures is not a substitute (even though procedures are essential given circumstances).Directed Creativity• 3 components exercised – goals, leverage points (means of achieving), connections (between goals and leverage points).• Process steps (improvement over brainstorming)1. Present the dilemma – what is known/believed, conflicts, tradeoffs, actions tried, barriers.2. Team members work alone – generate ideas, possible solutions, identify leverage points – fixed limited time alone, no distractions (not too long since needs to be periodic clarification of goals with cycles of generating options, learning, generating more options; ideally stretch over 2 days to assist subconscious).3. Present ideas – bring group together, record goal refinements, take turns. Benefit is in team discussion bringing together different types of expertise and knowledge.4. Integrate ideas – team leader/facilitator examines ho0w ideas fit together to help reframe the problem and the nature of the goal.5. Conduct additional rounds to improve description of goal and to generate more solutions.6. Converge on a solution – best performed or led by group or project leader.Managing Uncertainty• Five sources of uncertainty- missing information (don’t have it or can’t access it),- unreliable information (can’t trust it, erroneous, outdated),- conflicting information (inconsistent with other sources),- noisy information (buried in irrelevant information), and- confusing information (cannot interpret).• Ways to manage uncertainty➢ Delay – until situation resolves itself or more information is likely to be available. Trick is to apply intuition to gauge when to seek more information and whether new information could be valuable and is likely to arrive in time to make a difference.➢ Increase attention – step up active monitoring.➢ Fill the gaps with assumptions, checking as possible. Sounds good but there are no shortages of assumptions in any analysis, making intuition more useful.➢ Build an interpretation – construct explanations, categorize situations to correct interpretations.➢ Press on – despite preference for 100% information (Colin Powell … ‘don’t need more than 70% for a decision’).➢ Shake the tree – take action to perturbate the system to get experience.➢ Decision scenarios – use only a few scenarios to avoid confusion and difficulty of tracking. Objective is to develop a richer understanding by exploring dilemmas and tradeoffs.➢ Simplify the plan – Could make the plan more modular so tasks stand on their own. Contrast is highly interactive plan where everything depends on everything else, adding huge complexity from interdependency leading to brittleness (something going wrong ‘breaks’ everything) and high risk.➢ Use incremental decisions – take small steps, test, experiment. Drawback is signal of lack of commitment and sunk cost trap.➢ Embrace uncertainty and use it for advantage – use ability to thrive in uncertainty as a way to avoid linear or deterministic thinking.Klein’s next book with 2 colleagues was “Working Minds”, cognitive task analysis (CTA). It is a book centered on nitty gritty cognitive processes, valuable reading as a complement, a handbook for analysis with tools for the user. 3* for non-practitioners, 5* if you are in the CTA game.“Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making” is about combining theory from stories and observations to the world of uncertainty in decision making. This book was published prior to Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” with the same topical material. However, Streetlights is more balanced as to intuition vs. rational classical decision making than “Thinking …”. Kahneman laments ‘thinking fast’; Klein puts it in perspective and explains when each type of thought process has value … thinking fast (intuition) best applying to many real world situations (esp when time a factor). Streetlights is a tighter ‘weave’ than “Thinking Fast” which is filled with observations from academic type studies. It is broader than Klein’s previous books that were focused primarily on intuition, applied further to real life situations than “The Power of Intuition”. Kahneman and Tversky studied real people doing real things in quasi controlled conditions and laboratory situations. “Thinking Fast” is a wonderful academic survey (also “Nudge”, Thaler and Sunstein). Klein studies real people doing real things through their stories from real decision situations. His interest is in determining what/how they thought and made decisions (effectively) to avoid failure or catastrophe … or to achieve success in critical situations. The “Streetlights” name refers to how we see … in ‘bright light’ vs ‘shadows’, i.e. when all is known vs. uncertainties and unknowns. In the absence of information or in cloudy situations, we revert (arguably must) to intuition, finding context within a reference grid of past experiences. The often labeled “biases” that result are not distortions in reality but are reflective of thinking in light of experience. More importantly, the book places intuition into the context of broad cognitive processes and ways people think. Klein shows that constructed laboratory or academic research many times leads to errors because scenarios are artificial. Another issue related to applying intuition is collecting too much information … unhelpful/confusing or prompts overconfidence. Fundamental questions of need, purpose, use … many times don’t come into play. This book can be read on its own but reading “Sources” or “The Power of Intuition” first is of benefit. My recommendation … read “Sources”, skip “Working Minds”. 4-5*“Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights” is a volume just published. It was an ‘afterthought’, as Klein acknowledges, from collecting 120 stories of “aha” insights. The idea behind the book is organizations spend inordinate time and effort to eliminate errors and make corrections (Six Sigma) but little effort to encourage, enable, nurture and boost insights to lead to growth (improving performance by reducing the ‘down arrow’ instead of improving practices related to the ‘up arrow’). This book is an attempt to help with the ‘up arrow’ by using stories to provide insights on what works.Klein starts with a quick survey of previous studies. He moves to summarizing themes from 120 collected stories – connections, coincidences and curiosities, contradictions, and creative desperation. From themes he creates the “triple path model”: contradiction path, connection path, creative desperation path (coincidences included) with 3 steps … trigger, activity, outcome. The contradiction path involves seeing an inconsistency, using a weak anchor to rebuild the story, leading to a change in understanding. The connection/coincidence/curiosity path involves spotting an implication, adding a new anchor, leading to enhanced understanding. Creative desperation is triggered by escape from an impasse, discarding a weak anchor, and achieving a new understanding.The 2nd part of the book is about what interferes, what shuts down insights including how organizations obstruct insights, and how NOT to hunt for them.Up until this point the reader has read interesting stories, reviewed a mental model, read stories of how not to do it. The question is how does this come together in a methodological fashion to help. Part III is about how to foster insights, help yourself, help others, organizations, and tips for becoming a hunter of insights. There is a continued heavy reliance on stories (some recycle) to illustrate points. The reality is creativity and germination/development of insights is a complex and difficult process. Klein freely admits he had no intention of writing the book, a story he needed to tell as best he could. As such, the book lacks the tight structure of previous volumes but it is an easy read, worth reading. It offers ideas and insights leaders and practitioners of organization improvement can use. Do they come in recipe form, or with tools? … NO. This is a book that requires the reader to absorb and connect the dots for themselves. 4*

The authoer has gathered some stories about people who could see things that other people missed. He tries to find the commonality. According to my own knowledge in order to understand the reasons, one has to dive into the tiny detailed of what was needed for the insight to occur. Much research has been done on that. The main problem that I see in this book has to do with the way the author chose to collect the examples. This poses a filter for some characteristics. At some point the auther admits that even though he could not find in his list even a single case which support the "incubation assumption" there was a review of literature that show there there is a support for this assumption. There was a reason for why none of the cases in his list supported the assumption - it has to do with the way he collected the items for the list.Still - an interesting book.

Inspired by Martin Seligman and other positive psychologists, Gary Klein turned away from studying errors in decision making and focused on how experts like firefighters solve problems successfully. He is most interested in how we have and use insights. "When we put too much energy into eliminating mistakes, we're less likely to gain insights. Having insights is a different matter from preventing mistakes."Klein began by observing instances of creative problem solving that did not fit the accepted four-stage model of creativity consisting of preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification (from economist Graham Wallas' 1926  The Art of Thought ). He also saw important differences between the lab experiments and unfamiliar problems used to study problem solving and the real-life insights of experienced professionals working in their areas of expertise. Klein started from scratch, collecting his own set of critical incidents and examining them for patterns. He was careful to include instances of failed insight as well as instances of success.Klein concluded that we achieve insights by reorganizing our thinking into a new story about the problem we are trying to solve. His model highlights the importance of five factors in achieving insights. "Eventually I was able to sort these 120 cases into five different strategies for gaining insights: connections, coincidences, curiosities, contradictions, and creative desperation. Did the incident rely on a person making a connection? Did the person notice a coincidence as a trigger for the insight? Was the insight triggered by some curiosity-- an odd fact or event? Did it depend on seeing a contradiction? Or was the person stuck, desperately seeking some way out of an impasse?"The first section of the book describes Klein's research methods and how each of the five factors was identified. It also debunks common beliefs about problem solving. For example, an incubation period is unnecessary for creative insight, reasoning by analogy is productive when it involves an expert applying analogies from previously-solved problems, and computational models of searching a problems space to choose between possible solutions do not match how human experts think.The final two sections describe how insights are often blocked and what can be done to facilitate insightful problem solving. Most interesting is Chapter 12: How Organizations Obstruct Insights." It discusses how the high value many organizations place on predictability and reduction of errors discourages risk-taking and pursuing new strategies. "Insight is the opposite of predictable. Insights are disruptive. They come without warning, take forms that are unexpected, and open up unimagined opportunities. Insights get in the way of progress reviews because they reshape tasks and even revise goals. They carry risks-- unseen complications and pitfalls that can get you in trouble. So insights make you work harder." Another nugget is Klein's tongue-in-cheek list of methods to block insight. If you have a distaste for arbitrary deadlines and other organizational nonsense, you will find it enjoyable as well as useful.This is a useful discussion of the nature of insight and how to recognize and foster it. It strikes a good balance between research depth and practical application. Researchers will also find it useful for Klein's candid discussion of this methods and the value of a naturalistic approach to studying decision making. Readers who enjoy Klein's approach might also take a look at  Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions , Working Minds: A Practitioner's Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis , and  The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work .

Almost a 5-star review but for my personal gripe about American authors including comparisons with "Baseball" (which means nothing to me) and to pin-ball machines (I've never seen one and have little idea what they do). "Tilt!" = Tilt???However, I enjoyed the discussion he developed. Clearly, insight is an intangible subject- one that is going to be difficult to examine under a microscope or measure with a Vernier gauge nonetheless there it's still good science to attempt to extract some meaning from an unempirical review of 120 cases of insight - again, it's an approach that has it's limitations and it will, as you might expect, draw criticism from detractors who expect a perfect model. The author has tried to develop a structure and some appropriately descriptive language to allow the various cases to be grouped, described and distinguished from each other - but it's not like identifying elements in a periodic table with definite physical and chemical properties - as a subject, insight proves to be harder to define exactly BUT I think the author does a good job or taking the reader through the evolution (changes and refinement) of his thinking - I find it very hard to agree with the 2-star review given by "Vroomfondel" who says "Pretty disappointing book not meeting the expectation actually getting insights on getting insights."I liked the authors style enough to want to take a look at his other books and I wouldn't be surprised if I bought something else written by him.

Pretty disappointing book not meeting the expectation actually getting insights on getting insights.This book is based on 120 cases of someone having an aha moment. These are sorted in categories, some are discussed in length and show up in pretty every chapter indicating some redundancy. Main conclusion is a chart named 'triple path model' which will not haunt one's memory for too long.The book might be actually ok if your expectation is right. Expect some nice anektodes around insights, accept some redundancy and finally be prepared that comon sense is wrapped into some mild academic lingo and you get what you are looking for.

One of the most fascinating books i've read this year. The first section, on the 5 different ways in which we find insights, is the best part (later sections are on what companies/individuals can do to increase chances of having insights). The narrative style, with stories illustrating each example, is what makes the book so memorable and makes me able to recite his theories without learning or studying or trying to memorize. Highly recommend for anyone interested in psychology, innovation, corporate/management strategy, sociology, and the nuances of what makes an individual exceptional in their chosen field.

I was very disappointed in this book. I had high hopes but found it to be a bit of a one trick pony that focused on setting the scene for the great insight and had to hit a word count. Should have been an essay.

I love the way this is a collection of notes on human insights over time. This makes the read entertaining and educational while analysing what it takes to push stubbornly held views aside, introduce sceptism and really think. Brilliant. Every student should read it. Can't give it five stars because it is rather disturbing how easy it is to make a wrong decision!