Gary Klein: Insights For Making Better Decisions

**Gary Klein** (0:00)
One of the things I've examined is, how do you know who's an expert?
And I identified about seven or eight criteria. One of the criteria I use if I want to engage somebody's expertise is I'll ask them, tell me the last mistake you made. Let's talk about that.
If the person says, I can't think of any mistakes. To me, that means this person may be competent, but the survey is not an expert. Experts are well aware of their mistakes and their mistakes eat at them. But people who are journeymen, many of them stay as journeymen because they want to move on and forget about their mistakes.

**Shane Parrish** (0:51)
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Today, I'm speaking with Gary Klein. Gary is a research psychologist famous for pioneering the field of naturalistic decision-making. I've wanted to geek out with Gary on decision-making for years, and this conversation did not disappoint. We talk about why some people stagnate at an intermediate skill level, and some people reach mastery. Cognitive flexibility theory, the role of stories, both the ones we tell ourselves and the ones we tell others. The two ways to make better decisions, gaining better insights and reducing errors, and how we can improve at both of them. Premortems, shadow boxing, and how it helps you learn. Fixation errors, cognitive biases, mental models, and how we use them, and fast-tracking expertise.
It's time to listen and learn.
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**Gary Klein** (5:00)
An insight definitely is going to be incompatible with beliefs we hold. That's why we're so proud.
I did a study of 120 examples of insights. I wondered where insights came from. And I did the study out of frustration. Because I would give talks, and I would say if you want to improve performance, there's two things you can do. And it would be like a down arrow, what you want to reduce, and an up arrow, what you want to increase.