Sources of Power How People Make Decisions
One book, placed in its field — what Gary A. Klein's book gets right, where it goes further than the rest, and what the rest of the field adds.
Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide · bicycle.guide/guides/profile-sources_of_power_how_people_make
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Sources of Power How People Make Decisions
One book, placed in its field — what Gary A. Klein's book gets right, where it goes further than the rest, and what the rest of the field adds.
Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide · bicycle.guide/guides/profile-sources_of_power_how_people_make
The problem
Decision Effectiveness erodes when it is left to instinct instead of method.
You were taught the moves piecemeal, never the whole model.
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
The model
- 01Decision-Maker Experience
- 02Challenging Task Conditions
- 03Pattern Recognition and Intuition
- 04Situation Awareness
- 05Mental Simulation
- 06Use of Analogues and Stories
- 07Shared Team Cognition
- 08Decision Effectiveness
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 1 of 5 · Decision-Maker Experience
Judge a decision-maker by the variety of situations they have genuinely worked, not by their seniority.
Misconception
Practitioners believe experience is cumulative exposure — that ten years on the job automatically produces expert judgment.
Reality
Experience becomes expertise only when situations recur often enough to build recognizable patterns and when feedback closes the loop; a person can log a decade of low-variety, feedback-starved reps and still read situations like a novice.
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 2 of 5 · Challenging Task Conditions
Naturalistic conditions are defined by their features — pressure, ambiguity, dynamism, stakes — not by subject matter.
Misconception
Practitioners assume harder conditions call for more rigorous analysis — more data, more options weighed, more deliberation.
Reality
Time pressure, incomplete information, and dynamic change are precisely what defeat analytical methods; under these conditions the effective operator recognizes a viable option and evaluates it by mental simulation rather than enumerating and scoring alternatives.
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 3 of 5 · Pattern Recognition and Intuition
Expert intuition is rapid pattern matching against experience, not the opposite of expertise or analysis.
Misconception
Practitioners believe intuition is a mystical gift or a lucky hunch that some people have and others lack, unteachable and unaccountable.
Reality
Intuition is the disciplined output of thousands of stored experiences being unconsciously matched to the present cues; it is built by exposure to varied cases, not born, and it degrades in domains where you lack that experience base.
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 4 of 5 · Situation Awareness
Good situation awareness is a filtering skill: you know the handful of cues that matter and deliberately discard the rest.
Misconception
Practitioners believe situation awareness means gathering more data—that better decisions come from collecting every available piece of information.
Reality
Experts see less noise, not more data; their awareness is defined by knowing which few cues are diagnostic and which to ignore, so completeness of information often degrades rather than improves the picture.
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 5 of 5 · Mental Simulation
The most useful simulation is the one that fails, because it reveals a flaw before execution does.
Misconception
Practitioners treat mental simulation as optimistic rehearsal—imagining the plan succeeding to build confidence and buy-in.
Reality
Its power comes from breaking the sequence: you find where the story stops making sense, where a transition can't actually occur, or where you've assumed away a hard step—so the goal is to make the simulation fail, not confirm it.
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
A framework to use
Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) Framework
This framework is part of the full guide. See the guide →
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
The cheat sheet
- Decision-Maker ExperienceJudge a decision-maker by the variety of situations they have genuinely worked, not by their seniority.
- Challenging Task ConditionsNaturalistic conditions are defined by their features — pressure, ambiguity, dynamism, stakes — not by subject matter.
- Pattern Recognition and IntuitionExpert intuition is rapid pattern matching against experience, not the opposite of expertise or analysis.
- Situation AwarenessGood situation awareness is a filtering skill: you know the handful of cues that matter and deliberately discard the rest.
- Mental SimulationThe most useful simulation is the one that fails, because it reveals a flaw before execution does.
- Use of Analogues and StoriesThe analogue you retrieve frames the problem before you consciously choose how to solve it.
- Shared Team CognitionShared cognition is complementary and interlocking, not uniform—members knowing each other's roles beats everyone knowing everything.
- Decision EffectivenessA workable decision delivered on time outperforms an optimal decision delivered late.
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Sources
- Sources of Power How People Make Decisions — Gary A. Klein
Sources of Power How People Make Decisions · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide