Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions Reprint Edition

by Gary A. Klein (Author)

54 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0262611466

ISBN-10: 0262611465

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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. It documents human strengths and capabilities that so far have been downplayed or ignored.

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. The professionals studied include firefighters, critical care nurses, pilots, nuclear power plant operators, battle planners, and chess masters. Each chapter builds on key incidents and examples to make the description of the methodology and phenomena more vivid. 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Most studies of decision-making treat humans like rats in a laboratory. But Dr. Klein, a cognitive psychologist, spent a decade watching fire commanders, fighter pilots, paramedics, and others making split-second decisions on the job, and this book is a clear and engaging account of his findings.

(The Wall Street Journal)

Sources of Power is without a doubt one of the finest works on decision making. A must for anyone responsible for training command and control personnel.

(Hugh E. Wood, Program Chair, Emergency Incident Policy and Analysis, National Fire Academy)

Underscoring his points by citing a wide variety of fascinating incidents uncovered during his research, Gary Klein develops an elaborate and plausible model of the decision making of experienced experts. In the process, he makes a convincing case for the study of decision making in naturalistic settings. This study demonstrates the power of recognition-primed action and provides a convincing critique of the real-world validity of the normative decision making produced in laboratory settings.

(Hubert L. Dreyfus, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley and Stuart E. Dreyfus, Professor of Engineering Science, Emeritus, University of California)

Demonstrates the necessity of looking beyond economic and statistical models of decision making for an understanding of real-life decisions, particularly job-related decisions and decisions made in emergencies. The examples are excellent, deriving as they do from the authors extensive research with firefighters and the military.

(Lee Roy Beach, Ph.D., McClelland Professor of Management and Policy and Professor of Psychology, College of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona)

After reading Sources of Power by Gary Klein I have a much better understanding of why and how experienced fire fighters make critical life and death decisions on the fire ground. I also have a better understanding of why new officers may have some problems with decision making. With 26 years as a Los Angeles County Fire Fighter, I have held every rank in the Operations Bureau and have commanded many types of incidents including the 1992 civil disturbance, 1993 firestorms, and the 1994 earthquake. This book has given me new insight on what level of performance I should expect from new company officers and how to improve their performance.

(Larry C. Miller, Operations Chief Deputy, Los Angeles County Fire Department)

About the Author

Gary Klein is Senior Scientist at MacroCognition LLC. He is the author of The Power of Intuition, Seeing What Others Don't, Working Minds: A Practitioner's Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis (with Beth Crandall and Robert R. Hoffman), and Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making, the last two published by the MIT Press.

Series: MIT Press
Paperback: 338 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; Reprint edition (February 26, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262611465
ISBN-13: 978-0262611466
Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 6.2 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 54 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #204,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #612 in Popular Applied Psychology
- #393 in Medical Applied Psychology
- #836 in Business Management (Books)

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Wrong model poor results

July 5, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Most of what you know about decision-making is wrong but you'll have to read the book to find out why. Face it about eighty percent of what you know about decision-making is useless. The thesis of this book is that we make decisions based on patterns (recognition primed decision or RPD). This is the model that most of us use most of the time and that a few people are really good at in specific contexts. The other model we use is when we don't know anything about the domain. That's when we collect a lot of information and use it poorly to come up with a decision that makes us feel good. Klein points out (a) that domain experts don't often make decisions consciously they select a course of action based on stuff the rest of us miss and (b) that we really need to learn to train like experts.

The only thing missing is the old story about the plant expert that charged 99 cents for taping on a console with a small hammer and $999.99 for knowing where to tap.

Klein is incredibly readable for an academic and makes lots of use of case studies in the book. Fascinating.

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BigBrotherAmazon

Basis for Decision Support Systems/C3

July 29, 2005

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I will not repeat many of the fine reviews already posted. What I will say is that "Sources of Powers" looks at how real experienced people make REAL decisions in the field as opposed to traditional research where decision making is researched via students as "lab rats" in unrealistic situations. You will learn about NDM (Naturalistic Decision Making)/RPD (Recognition Primed Model) as it can apply to the developement of decision support systems and command and control systems. DoD has used these concepts to develop collaborative and DSS applications that decision makers will actually use. If you will be involved in the development of DSS or collaborative type software then you should give this textbook a read. This book is very popular with DoD and as a reading assignment in several universities.

More comments on my views of the booK:

Gary Klein would be the first to say that some of his concepts are a work in process and NDM (Naturalistic Decision making) is not just one man or one concept such as RPM (Recognition-primed decision model). Klein begins the dialog on the nature of decision making and how it can be incorporated into decision support systems and knowledge based systems. I believe knowledge based applications will be the trend in the next ten years or so and lots of money will be wasted when one does not properly consider the cognitive issues involved in development.

Some may say that Gary is guilty of stating the obvious but all too often the obvious is ignored because...well it's obvious. Also, lab rats and college students are not necessarily what/who you need to study when looking at how experienced decision makers make decisions. NDM (naturalistic decision making) offers an alternative to the rational choice strategy (see Herbert A. Simon). In the rational choice strategy the decision maker:

1. Identifies the set of options

2. Identifies the ways of evaluating these options.

3. Weights each evaluation dimension.

4. Does the rating

5. Picks the options with the highest score.

Throughout the book Gary shows that the rational choice strategy is seldom used by experienced decision makers. One alternative to this framework is NDM and one instance of this is RPM. For those not versed in cognitive science, RPM may offer an easy to understand content validation on how experts make decisions:

* It appears to describe the decision strategy used most frequently by people with experience.

* It explains how people can use experience to make difficult decisions.

* It demonstrates that people can make effective decisions without using a rational choice strategy.

Can RPM's logic be incorporated into command and control and decision support systems? DoD has examples where that has been done.

I think the biggest issue is no decision model (good or bad) is brought into the design and left up to the IT developers and programmers who certainly do not have the decision skills to embed that knowledge. Too often the decision makers have been left out of the equation because it was thought to be more of an IT thing and the result is a failed information system. As Klein states:

"Too often software designers are not told what key decisions are that the system must help the operator or heuristics that the operator is likely to use. Left without any way to visualize the operator, designers do the best job they can to pack information onto screens so that it will all be there when needed."

Many users of DSS and KM have been victims of such a process of "packing/" Those that do use some decision model, often tend to select optimization models which may have their place but may not be relevant to the context and type of decision maker that will use the system. These types of optimization models tend to be more useful for junior decision makers but there can be a case made that optimization models could be used to bring experienced people out of a certain mind set.

Klein edited an earlier book written by various practitioners if you are interested in delving further but I think "Sources of Power" gives you a good overview of NDM. What I like about NDM is the fact that extensive work has been done with experienced decision makers. Decision making is messy and you can't just "study" it with student test subjects on campus in my opinion.

Decision making is a personal thing that is also influenced by context for example the emotional stress sometimes linked with decision making under crises. Gary Klein in a sense says that you can't ignore that emotion because decision making is personal and any IT support has to be in harmony with the decision maker(s). These questions should be asked and discussed and certainly NDM is but one concept in the vast world of decision making theory that goes beyond the basic decision model of Herbert A. Simon.

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Want to know how people make decisions? Try this view out.

December 12, 2008

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is an insightful book, exploring how we make decisions. Remember the old Ben Franklin approach? Two columns on a piece of paper: One column is headed reasons to decide yes and the other why we would not make the decision. Whichever side has the most entries determines our decision. Others argue that humans use a rational calculus to make decisions. What are the costs and benefits of any decision?

There are any number of perspectives on how humans make decisions--rational choice theory, heuristics and biases, the evolutionary toolbox, incrementalism, and on and on. This book adopts something like a naturalistic decision-making perspective.

Klein's book talks about how we make decisions based on his study of actual decision-making--whether by firefighters or military personnel. His focus is "naturalistic decision-making." It provides a useful alternative view on how people make decisions. He notes factors that help define such a situation--time pressure, high stakes, unclear goals, inadequate information, poorly defined procedures, and the like. Despite such challenges, people with experience tend to make pretty good decisions. This book addresses why and suggests how all of us could make better decisions.

I am not completely convinced by the argument, but the author does a nice job of laying out his viewpoint. And it clearly adds to the discourse on the subject of decision-making.

Fine book. Not the easiest read, but it makes a useful contribution.

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Data driven insights in crisis decision making

February 26, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Dr. Klein does an outstanding job of taking a complex (and often misunderstood) topic and creating a frame work that is both logical and supported by data.

Dr. Klein points out that in times of extreme stress people do not have time to make long, measured decisions. Experienced decision makers tend to see patterns and base decisions very quickly on best fits. When decision makers have a little more time, they tend to run mental simulations of events very quickly just to see if courses of action are feasible.

This was a quick, easy to understand approach to a complex problem area.

In service,

Rich

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Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions Reprint Edition