WEBVTT 00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:08.360 Over the years when dissent, when teaching decision 00:00:08.360 --> 00:00:12.240 making processes to students and executives at MIT and elsewhere, 00:00:12.440 --> 00:00:16.920 I often set up group exercises that let students practice 00:00:17.160 --> 00:00:21.560 this sort of debate and constructive conflict in teams, 00:00:21.880 --> 00:00:25.680 and it gives them firsthand experience on how these 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:31.480 processes reliably deliver higher quality decisions 00:00:31.720 --> 00:00:35.400 than decisions that didn't have this kind of design process. 00:00:35.400 --> 00:00:37.320 And so that's what I've talked about here. 00:00:37.320 --> 00:00:40.880 I also, in what I teach students and executives 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:42.960 as well, will oftentimes watch 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:48.120 a clip of a movie motion picture called 13 Days, 00:00:48.360 --> 00:00:51.840 which depicted the decision making process that President 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:55.680 Kennedy used during what was what's now called the Cuban Missile Crisis. 00:00:55.960 --> 00:00:58.880 This is probably one of the most consequential decisions 00:00:59.160 --> 00:01:01.920 that any president has ever made in history, 00:01:01.920 --> 00:01:06.000 because it was the closest time that the U.S. 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.400 and Russia came to launching nuclear 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:12.880 warheads on one another, essentially starting World War three. 00:01:13.160 --> 00:01:16.360 Here are some of my own highlights that play out in the movie. 00:01:16.360 --> 00:01:20.960 And as you'll see, many of these kind of core activities 00:01:20.960 --> 00:01:25.280 that Kennedy used in making this decision align with the four principles 00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:27.080 that I'm suggesting in our program. 00:01:27.080 --> 00:01:30.480 Number one, he was very clear about his goal, 00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:34.000 and his goal was to avoid nuclear war. 00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:40.200 Now, this is different than what tradition would have had suggested for a U.S. 00:01:40.200 --> 00:01:42.320 president. And tradition would say. 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:44.240 The the the challenge 00:01:45.280 --> 00:01:45.600 is to 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:48.840 overcome your adversary in the future adversary order. 00:01:49.720 --> 00:01:52.280 That's what traditional policy would have recommended. 00:01:52.280 --> 00:01:55.960 But he didn't take that route, the route that he took as he wants 00:01:55.960 --> 00:01:58.080 to avoid nuclear war. 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:02.400 And as as you see in the movie, he had a lot of pressures 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:06.320 to make to follow sort of a more traditional decision process 00:02:06.560 --> 00:02:08.000 as commander in chief. 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:12.240 So this is my first principle is to be very clear about the problem 00:02:12.600 --> 00:02:14.000 or the decision 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:17.600 or the goals that you're trying to achieve with this decision process. 00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:20.760 The second is that you'll see 00:02:20.920 --> 00:02:23.560 that he actually owned the decision process 00:02:24.040 --> 00:02:26.600 from the very beginning as commander in chief. 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:30.120 Now, he sought out lots of different perspectives 00:02:30.360 --> 00:02:34.960 that he knew and his advisers knew were important to the decision making process. 00:02:35.240 --> 00:02:38.720 And as you'll see, he sought perspective from people 00:02:38.720 --> 00:02:42.200 who dislike him and even distrusted him. 00:02:42.640 --> 00:02:45.960 But he knew those people had valuable expertise 00:02:45.960 --> 00:02:49.360 that could inform his understanding of the problem. 00:02:49.800 --> 00:02:54.360 This was my second recommendation in designing a decision process 00:02:54.600 --> 00:02:59.520 is to seek out multiple perspectives to understand the problem that you face. 00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:04.160 The third thing I want to point out is he utilized teams of advisors, 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:08.160 several sets of advisers to come up with creative solutions 00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:12.240 and multiple solutions to this problem that he was facing. 00:03:13.680 --> 00:03:14.560 Those alternative 00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:18.240 solutions that he faced actually led to some of the decisions 00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:22.760 that he actually made, the solutions that he actually put in place. 00:03:23.120 --> 00:03:27.600 And the solutions creatively did avoid these 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:31.120 two countries going to nuclear war with one another. 00:03:31.400 --> 00:03:35.760 So this was my third suggested principle, is to when you're 00:03:35.960 --> 00:03:40.880 trying to arrive at decisions, especially on high stakes decision, 00:03:41.040 --> 00:03:45.440 generate multiple alternatives and multiple solutions to consider. 00:03:45.880 --> 00:03:47.200 And then finally, 00:03:47.200 --> 00:03:51.120 I want to point out is that President Kennedy made the tough call. 00:03:51.480 --> 00:03:52.000 Right. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:55.920 And everybody sort of got behind him when he made those tough calls. 00:03:55.920 --> 00:03:57.600 And this is my fourth 00:03:57.600 --> 00:04:01.000 principle is that, you know, you make tough calls, 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:02.480 make sure that now you're 00:04:02.480 --> 00:04:07.200 moving from decision making to decision implementation or decision execution. 00:04:07.240 --> 00:04:10.080 So it's again, I think that the movie provides 00:04:10.280 --> 00:04:13.240 an excellent illustration of some of the design principles 00:04:13.240 --> 00:04:16.640 for decision processes that I'm recommending in this program. 00:04:17.200 --> 00:04:20.960 One importantly, what I think the Cuban Missile Crisis shows is that if you have 00:04:20.960 --> 00:04:26.360 a high quality decision process, you're going to produce higher quality decisions. 00:04:26.680 --> 00:04:27.160 Right. 00:04:27.160 --> 00:04:29.760 So that's the big point of sort of 00:04:29.760 --> 00:04:32.880 when you think of of architecting a decision process, 00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:35.480 you can architect a high quality process 00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:38.000 and then you'll have higher quality decisions. 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:41.880 Research done by Ohio State Professor Long that suggests 00:04:41.880 --> 00:04:44.760 that about 50% managers decisions 00:04:45.080 --> 00:04:47.880 fail to achieve their intended outcomes. 00:04:48.080 --> 00:04:50.760 So in general, I think you can rightly say that 00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:54.560 status quo decision processes in organizations earn about an F, 00:04:55.080 --> 00:04:57.240 okay in terms of rating scale 00:04:57.640 --> 00:05:00.520 and he one of the big insights said 00:05:01.240 --> 00:05:05.480 in this research was the actual decisions and the consequences of those decisions 00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:08.960 is that managers used for decision processes 00:05:09.240 --> 00:05:12.320 and making those decisions as transformational leaders. 00:05:12.320 --> 00:05:14.080 I think you want to take some of the principles 00:05:14.080 --> 00:05:16.640 and some of the processes that we're describing here 00:05:17.560 --> 00:05:21.920 to help you make better decisions as you're looking at your organization 00:05:22.160 --> 00:05:25.360 holistically in terms of change and innovation 00:05:25.640 --> 00:05:29.640 by having a better decision process, we hope that you'll have better outcomes 00:05:29.640 --> 00:05:33.000 and better consequences in those decisions that you make. 00:05:33.400 --> 00:05:36.120 Remember that the best decisions can or 00:05:36.160 --> 00:05:39.840 can become an outcome of the best quality processes. 00:05:40.080 --> 00:05:43.920 And now we're going to turn our attention to sort of continue this logic of design 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:48.480 thinking, but applying it specifically to ways approaches to innovation. 00:05:48.720 --> 00:05:51.600 And we're going to apply it to how to design high performing teams.