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Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making (MIT Press) Paperback – September 30, 2011

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Gary A. Klein (Author)
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4.5 out of 5 stars 17 customer reviews
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  • Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making (MIT Press)
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Product Details

  • Series: MIT Press
  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: A Bradford Book (September 30, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0262516721
  • ISBN-13: 978-0262516723
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFascinating and Readable
By Robert Barcus on October 31, 2009
Format: Hardcover
This book is fascinating and wonderfully well written. I have read Dr. Klein's previous works and followed his rise in the world of decision making. The book was very engaging, starting with a little pre-test about the reader's attitudes about 10 principles of performance improvement. He uses these ten questions as the backbone of his structure.
As he addresses each one in turn he explains what you are about to learn; tells you about it; illustrates it with examples that read like good mystery stories(many quite personal; explains what the example illustrates; and tops it off with a disclaimer where he acknowledges the limitations and competing arguments. This pattern repeats with examples coming every few pages. Of course he reiterates what we've learned in a clear,brief chapter summary. This guy knows how to help you learn. He doesn't just drill you with information. He educates and most importantly entertains. I loved it.
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5.0 out of 5 starsMaking choices in the real world
By Merwin Swanson on November 14, 2009
Format: Hardcover
I have gone through life assuming that following through on a plan was a key to good management. Fact is, however, that my plans are sometimes fuzzy and, when, clear, I haven't followed them. And I have managed to get through a career with modest success and thanking the organizational gods that no one found out I was a muddling through. Without specifically endorsing a muddle-through approach, Gary Klein's _Streetlights and Shadows_ does make clear that most decision-making in the real world, regardless of any plan-organize-and-follow-through model, involves a healthy dose of adjusting, re-directing, accommodating,and adapting.

What Klein does is explain that his is the norm in any organization's activities and provides suggestions/insights into how to accept that plans often must change and how to make the changes. One suggestion: Assume that the plan your embarking on has failed. What are the most likely reasons that your plans did not work out? What should you have alerted you to the problem? How could you have adjusted?

Klein's style is readable and full of specific examples and anecdotes to support his general observations.
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5.0 out of 5 starsCompelling stories, essential to technical management evolution
By Amazon Customer on November 2, 2009
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
The growing gap between those with technical literacy and those can be closed, in part, by explaining technical findings using stories. Those who make the greatest impact on our views and the way we do things are expert as using stories to illustrate their points. Dr. Klein has collected a career's worth of insights and illustrates them with compelling stories that make this an easy-to-read, easy-to-comprehend volume that will enable readers to apply the important arguments he shares. My own investigations into government acquisition and healthcare information technology are threaded with people's desires to "remove the artistry" from practice and replace it with standardization. Dr. Klein makes compelling, and what I hope are broadly accepted, arguments for growing, supporting and taking best advantage of expertise -- rather than remove the artistry, he shows the advantage of focusing instead on creating more artists. "Streetlights and Shadows" is a highly useful volume for program managers, systems and specialty engineers that, once picked up, is hard to put down.
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5.0 out of 5 starsNice follow-up to Sources of Power
By Gojko on November 30, 2012
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I'm a big fan of Gary Klein's book Sources of Power, and I keep quoting it often in workshops and lectures. Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making is a follow-up to Sources of Power, published 10 years later. Although it's not exactly fresh meat, it only recently came to the top of my book queue. With the topic of adaptive decision making, this book fits in nicely with the recent trends in software delivery. My impression of the book was not as mind-blowing as Sources of Power, but it was certaintly thought-provoking enough to deserve a strong recommendation.

The key thread in the book is examining the relationship between analysis and intuition, largely comparing standard procedures and skills based on experience. `The way we see in bright light differs from the way we see in shadows. Neither is the "right" way. We need both.' is a quote that summarises Klein's argument well. He examines contexts in which standardising ways of doing things helps and the contexts where that hurts, in particular with skilled performers, showing that experts mostly rely on heuristics drawn from stories instead of rules. There are many nice stories in the book about decision biases, but often arguing for the oposite conclusion from most popular psychology books. Klein discredits most of the research on decision biases and exposing how reasoning strategies can lead to errors because they were done using college students performing tasks that are unfamiliar, artificial, and relatively independent of context. His idea is that biases aren't distorting our thinking, but instead reflect our thinking.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsOutstanding insight into problem solving under complex conditions
By Benjamin G. Pratt on July 12, 2016
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Walks through the most common assumptions about what should be done to solve problems and drive continuous improvement, showing how these generally hold up well under simpler, more straightforward conditions (solving puzzles) - and it so well in more complex situations (solving mysteries). Very pragmatic and useful knowledge managers and leaders in all walks of life...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very provocative - speaks of real world decision making.

Published 3 months ago by gerald sullivan
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Seminal work and very useful as a research source.

Published 5 months ago by Dan Toomey
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Makes decision making courses so much clearer

Published 9 months ago by Nathan Mc
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Great reading

Published 13 months ago by Darlene Lattimer
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

This is an excellent and thought-provoking book.

Published 17 months ago by G. Byatt
3.0 out of 5 starsadequate and curiously well documented

I found it to be Interesting and an easy read. The Author makes good use of recent and historical events.

Published 19 months ago by Robert Solovy
3.0 out of 5 starsI think the content is very interesting and useful. The reading...

I think the content is very interesting and useful. The reading experience on Kindle for iPad is just terrible. Read more

Published 20 months ago by Ralph Soule
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat overview of decision making in the real world

Klein does a great job clearly explaining the research and issues concerning naturalistic decision making. Read more

Published on June 11, 2014 by MSJ
5.0 out of 5 starsAstute guide to making decisions in complex situations

In 1998, Gary Klein gave readers Sources of Power, a thoughtful, innovative consideration of how to make decisions in complex situations. Read more

Published on November 1, 2011 by Rolf Dobelli
1.0 out of 5 starsNot science

This book is just bad. It's one anecdote after another. I found his conclusions unsupportable on the basis of the data presented. Even the data presented at the very start is bad. Read more

Published on July 5, 2010 by Bob F, measurement guy

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