Blink

Blink is a book that analyzes the way people make decisions. According to the author, Malcolm Gladwell, people use one of two strategies to come to a decision. The first strategy is a conscious one. When using this strategy, people think about what they have learned and develop an answer. The second is an unconscious strategy in which a person's brain reaches a conclusion in a matter of seconds, often times without awareness. These conclusions are what we generally refer to as hunches or instincts and, it is the development and reliability of these types of conclusions that Gladwell focuses on in this book. In doing so, Gladwell sets out to accomplish three tasks. The first is to prove that decisions made very quickly can be as effective as decisions that are made cautiously and deliberately. Gladwell's second task is attempting to answer the question: "When should we trust our instincts and when should we be weary of them?" In support of this question, the author gives several examples of instances where people have made decisions based on their instincts, some resulting in brilliant success, and others in utter disaster. Gladwell's third and most important task is to convince the reader that these first impressions can be educated and controlled.

Gladwell acknowledges that the unconscious decisions we come to are often times more accurate than the ones we make after our judgment has been clouded by reason and rationalization. However, it can be hard for people to rely on these instinctive decisions, because the thought process happens behind a "locked door." In order to make these decisions more credible, Gladwell explains the brains ability to "thin slice." According to the author, thin slicing is the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience. When the human unconscious thin slices, according to Gladwell, it sifts through a particular situation and throws out all irrelevant information. This process occurs constantly in our minds, as we move from situation to situation. The information that we gather is stored in our unconscious and manifests itself in very subtle ways in our decision making process. Throughout the book, Gladwell gives numerous examples from research and the testimony of others to determine when our instincts can be very reliable and when they can be extremely deceiving.

Blink deals with several topics that we have discussed in Organizational Behavior. Gladwell uses Warren Harding's rise to presidential office to explain what he calls "the Warren Harding error." Gladwell's explanation of "the Warren Harding error" is very similar to the halo effect. The halo effect refers to our need to have consistent impressions of people. In order to do this, sometimes we have to overlook one or two characteristics of a person that are inconsistent with the impression that we have of them. In the case of Warren Harding, he had the look of someone who inspired confidence. Harding had a charm about him that won the adoration of all those with whom he came in contact, and when people looked at him they thought "You know, he would make a great president." They were completely willing to overlook the fact that Harding lacked many of the qualifications necessary to be an effective president, because their impression of him was that he would make a great president. Gladwell makes the claim that thin slicing tends to create biases in our subconscious in favor of and against certain types of people. If true, this is especially disturbing because it means that we may discriminate against people or lump them into a certain stereotype without even realizing it. In one example, Gladwell polled half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list and found that the average height of their CEO was nearly six feet tall, whereas the average height of the American male is 5'9". To put these numbers into perspective, Gladwell goes on to state that only 14.5 percent of American males are six feet or taller. However, 58 percent of the CEO's in his study were six feet or taller. Now, most members of a board of directors would never admit to having a bias toward tall males. However, this research states otherwise. Most rational people would agree that short people and tall people are equally capable of making sound business decisions. However, if this is the case, why is this population of CEO's dominated by a minority of American males? It is Gladwell's argument that these types of biases live in the human unconscious and people act on them without even realizing it. From our readings in the text, we have learned that a stereotype is the belief that all members of specific groups share similar traits and behaviors. Gladwell's research suggests that, whether knowingly or unknowingly, people who hire for positions of leadership consider height to be a trait of successful people.

If managers are to put Gladwell's theories into practice, they must abandon a certain degree of top-down decision making. In our textbook, Greenberg defines top-down decision-making as an approach that puts the power to make decisions in the hands of managers, leaving lower level workers with little or no opportunity to make decisions. Gladwell also recognizes that in order for people to make effective split-second decisions, they must be given the right set of inputs. In other words, employees must be properly trained before they can trust their instinctive decision making ability. However, once employees have been given the proper inputs, managers must implement some form of empowered decision making if their employees are to act on their instincts. According to Greenberg, empowered decision making allows employees to make decisions required to do their jobs without seeking supervisory approval. While some managers will not be eager to relinquish control in decision-making to their subordinates, they may find that doing so helps them become more efficient managers. Those managers, who are able to apply Gladwell's theories to their employees, stand to decrease their subordinate-imposed time, thereby increasing their discretionary time, as explained in the article "Who's Got the Monkey?"

To support this idea, Gladwell tells the story of a young lieutenant named Paul Van Riper, who used constant training and empowered decision making to run his platoon in Vietnam. Van Riper believed empowered decision making was not only necessary to allow people to act instinctively, but also essential to run an effective platoon. For example, Van Riper ran his men through extensive physical training on the days between missions. However, once fighting started out in the field, Van Riper did not want introspection.