Blink, and you'll miss an easy call

Malcolm Gladwell’s book, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," has been on The New York Times bestseller list for more than three months. It is one of the most talked about books of the year. Following the success of his "The Tipping Point" several years ago, Gladwell has established himself as the leading non-academic in the United States whose goal is to change our understanding of how we think and make sense of rapidly changing business and social phenomena.

Clearly, he is the intellectual heir to Alvin Toffler.

Gladwell’s thesis is that we can make better decisions with less knowledge because too much information paralyzes the decision-making process. Information overload creates the paradox of choice -- too many choices often lead to either no choices made or a muddle from a poor selection of options.

He advocates a process of decision-making called “rapid cognition.” This process focuses on using key bits of information to identify recognizable patterns or behavioral traits to reach tentative conclusions. Many of these patterns of behavior are embedded in the unconscious. His goal is to get individuals, as well as societal leaders, to free themselves of data-driven decision-making.

Of course, Gladwell’s approach empowers regular people to define “reality,” a power that heretofore belonged solely to society’s elites. “Rapid cognition” facilitates a shift from the authoritarian mode of scientists as knowledge producers in our technocratic society to empowering the educated public. It is precisely this proposed shift that recently earned Gladwell a scathing review by Federal Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner in the National Review. The prominent judge and law professor argued that Gladwell’s ideas were hunches and snap judgments. These, he contended, were primitive ways of understanding.

According to Posner, the only legitimate way to know is “through the domain of logic -- deliberate, reasoned discussion through the scientific method. Articulate thinking is the model of rationality.” In other words, the non-scientific community should recognize that the ability to produce and interpret knowledge lies solely with those trained in the scientific tradition.

Posner is a misguided elite trying to hold on to power. The scientific method essentially says to live outside of this tradition is a good way to misunderstand “reality.” Thus, any knowledge gained outside of the logical and rational methodology theoretically cannot exist. Therefore, anyone (like Gladwell) who understands and interprets outside of the scientific methodological system should be dismissed as irrelevant or crazy.

Although Gladwell is not an academic, his work is based on cutting-edge research conducted at some of the country’s leading universities. His idea of “thin-slicing” is illustrative and is based on the counterintuitive notion that better decisions can be made with less, rather than more, information. The concept is predicated on the fundamental scientific concept that nature is orderly and, consequently, there is a recognizable regularity, order and pattern-matching that occurs in the natural world.

Thin-slicing helps us understand these organized patterns much quicker than the traditional scientific method.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s argument for the invasion of Iraq is a good example of thin-slicing. Her position was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (and she knew this because Western nations had sold him the technology and materials), he had used them before, and he would pass them on to a terrorist group to use against the United States without leaving his fingerprints. Consequently, Rice and President Bush thin-sliced and used this metaphor to justify a pre-emptive strike: “If we wait for a smoking gun (to prove conclusively that he does not have WMDs), it may be a mushroom cloud over an American city.”

Using only several related pieces of information, the decision was made to go to war. This is the essence of thin-slicing. It was a plausible, but possibly not accurate, analysis: no WMDs have yet been found. Yet, given the high costs of being right, can we retrospectively say that the pre-emptive strike was not warranted?

Non-linear thinking also helps us see what was apparent, but otherwise invisible, because of a linear worldview. This often leads to better decision-making and management processes as well. Take the case of medical malpractice insurance.

The high payments rendered in malpractice suits are the catalyst for skyrocketing health case costs in the United States. Most stakeholders agree on this. To contain costs, conservatives want tort reform and monetary caps placed on damage awards. Conversely, liberals believe that large malpractice settlements should be available to penalize doctors for shoddy medical practices. They also believe that this potential liability makes doctors more careful and focused in their approach to medicine.

Yet, Gladwell’s research points out a very different reason for malpractice suits. There is a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the amount of time a doctor spends with a patient and the probability of a lawsuit. That is, doctors who spend more time with a patient are less likely to be sued, even if they had been negligent. In sum, altruistic doctors rarely get sued but non-altruistic doctors get sued repeatedly. These physician patterns of behavior, and resulting patient reactions, occur with predictable regularity.

My daughter is currently completing her first year of medical school. One of the first courses she was required to take was Patient Care. She was taught to explain procedures to patients, answer their questions, and treat them with dignity. She was taught to take time with each patient.

Yet,our managed care health system, administered by CPAs and MBAs, is constructed like an old-time assembly line. Most doctors are expected to see, diagnosis and dismiss a patient within 10 minutes. This leaves little time for the crucial human side of medicine.

All that is learned in med school Patient Care classes evaporates when a doctor enters the managed care system. Eliminating the mechanical design of the current health care system -- not tort reform or penalizing doctors for negligence -- apparently will do more to stop malpractice suits than anything else.

Thin-slicing is just the latest cognitive framework for making quick and accurate decisions in a third-wave world. UCLA management professor William Ouichi did the same thing 25 years ago in his book, "Theory Z." His focus for quick decision-making was the organization’s culture. The values and modeling behaviors of senior executives in “tight cultures” taught managers, far from headquarters and in different time zones, how to instantaneously make decisions (on their own) that benefited the company.

"Blink!" is an interesting and informative book. As the medical malpractice example demonstrates, it gives us unique perspectives on pressing business and public policy issues that had not been previously considered. Ignoring the “less is better” mantra in decision-making will lead to policy decisions that only worsen existing problems. We should not close our eyes to this important book.