WEBVTT

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Over the
years when you sit when teaching decision

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making processes to students
and executives at MIT and elsewhere,

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I often set up group exercises
that let students practice

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this sort of debate
and constructive conflict in teams,

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and it gives them firsthand experience
on how

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these processes reliably

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deliver higher quality decisions

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than decisions that didn't have
this kind of design process.

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And so that's what I've talked about here.

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I also, in what I teach
students and executives

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as well, will oftentimes watch

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clips of a movie,
the motion picture called 13 Days,

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which depicted the decision making process
that President

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Kennedy used during what was what's now
called the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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This is probably
one of the most consequential decisions

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that any president
has ever made in history,

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because this is the closest time
that the U.S.

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and Russia came
to launching nuclear warheads on one

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another, essentially starting World
War three, which would have undoubtedly

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killed millions of people
probably pretty quickly as well.

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Historians have also

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watched the movie and given it their
blessing that the way the dynamics

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are played out in
the movie are mostly correct and accurate.

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So this is one of the reasons
that I recommend it

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and I recommend it to you as well.

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Here are some of my own highlights
that play out in the movie.

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And as you'll see,
many of these are kind of core activities

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that Kennedy used in making this decision
align with the four principles

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that I'm suggesting in our program.

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Number one,
he was very clear about his goal,

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and his goal was to avoid nuclear war.

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Now, this is different than what tradition
would have had suggested for a U.S.

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president. And tradition would say.

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The challenge
or the goal is to overcome

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your adversary,
to beat your adversary or to win.

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That's what traditional policy
would have recommended.

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But he didn't take that route.

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The route that he took is
he wants to avoid nuclear war.

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And as as you see in the movie,
he had a lot of pressures

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to make to follow sort
of a more traditional decision process

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as commander in chief.

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So this is my first principle
is to be very clear about the problem

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or the decision

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or the goal that you're trying to achieve
with this decision process.

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The second is that you'll see

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that he actually owned
the decision process

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from the very beginning
as commander in chief.

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Now, he sought out
lots of different perspectives

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that he knew and his advisers knew were
important to the decision making process.

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And as you'll see,
he sought perspective from people

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who disliked him and even distrusted him.

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But he knew those people had valuable
expertise

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that could inform
his understanding of the problem.

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This was my second recommendation
in designing a decision process

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is to seek out multiple perspectives
to understand the problem that you face.

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The third thing I want to point out
is he utilized teams of advisors,

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several sets of advisers
to come up with creative solutions

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and multiple solutions
to this problem that he was facing.

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Those alternative

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solutions that he faced actually led to
some of the decisions

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that he actually made, the solutions
that he actually put in place.

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And these solutions creatively
did avoid these

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two countries
going to nuclear war with one another.

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So this was my third suggested
principle, is to when you're

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trying to arrive at decisions,
especially on high stakes decision,

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generate multiple alternatives
or multiple solutions to consider.

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And then finally,
the fourth thing I want to point out

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is that President
Kennedy made the tough call.

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And everybody sort of got behind him
when he made those tough calls.

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And this is my fourth

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principle, is that, you know,
when you make tough calls,

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make sure that now you're

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moving from decision making to decision
implementation or decision execution.

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So at the end,
I think that the movie provides

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an excellent illustration
of some of the design principles

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for decision processes
that I'm recommending in this program.

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More importantly, what I think the Cuban
Missile Crisis shows is that if you have

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a high quality decision process, you're
going to produce higher quality decisions.

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So that's the big point of sort of

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when you think of
of architecting a decision process,

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you can architect a high quality process
and you'll have higher quality decisions.

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Research done by Ohio State
Professor Paul Nutt suggests

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that about 50% managers decisions

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fail to achieve their intended outcomes.

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So in general,
I think you could rightly say that

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status quo decision processes
in organizations earn about an F.

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In terms of a grading scale.

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And he one of the big insights
that that came

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from his research of actual decisions
and the consequences of those decisions

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is that managers used poor decision
processes in making those decisions.

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As transformational leaders, I think
you want to take some of the principles

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and some of the processes
that we're describing here

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to help you make better decisions
as you're

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looking at your organization
holistically in terms of change

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and innovation
by having a better decision process.

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We hope that you'll have better outcomes
and better consequences

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in those decisions that you make.

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Remember that the best decisions can or

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can become an outcome
of the best quality processes.

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And now we're going to turn our attention
to sort of continue this logic of design

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thinking, but applying it specifically
to ways approaches to innovation.

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And we're going to apply it
to how to design high performing teams.