Two Speeds of Minds!<\/p>\n
I have been in the entrepreneurial world for many years. \u00a0I have been in the faith-based non-profit world for four decades and, more recently, the marketplace global tech world.\u00a0 It\u2019s been an absolute rush at times, yet I\u2019ve also experienced the world of bureaucracy, which kept my aspirational hopes and dreams at bay for far too long. Thinking Fast and Slow gives me the premise of the importance of understanding the human decision-making process and how understanding cognitive biases is relevant and important to our day-to-day decision-making. This book pushed me to greater depths as it was difficult to focus and understand, as Thinking Fast and Slow was written by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll pay for that; I\u2019ll give you fifty to one hundred thousand dollars for that project today; I want to see that site launched!\u201d Here I am in one of the world\u2019s largest cities, Toronto, Canada, a city with many hot spots of great need.\u00a0 The project was called \u201cThe Jane-Finch Project.\u201d\u00a0 Most recently, there was a drive-by shooting, and it killed innocent young people at a school, just enjoying each other\u2019s company like young people should. The drive-by shooting also affected families in their homes. Home after a long day just sitting in their living rooms. It was devastating, to say the least. We knew some of these families well as we spent much time over the years creating sustainable, thoughtful initiatives to resource and mobilize their people to create change in their communities. However, these initiatives were just initiatives; they were not ongoing, sustainable programs, just a Band-Aid. That one hundred thousand dollars was gold, it was tempting to just say yes. That financial stakeholder was the answer to my prayers, but was it really?<\/p>\n
Kahneman gives us clarity that our minds are divided into two systems:<\/p>\n
System 1: FAST THINKING!! I just love fast, and it\u2019s a rush. I love thinking fast, especially with a collective cohort, when solving problems in crisis! It\u2019s intuitive thinking. It’s quick, it’s reactionary, a nuanced thinking that does not give it much conscious thought.<\/p>\n
System 2: SLOW THINKING. I have a love-and-hate relationship with slow thinking. Let me tell you why. I have this fear of bureaucracy, the lagging behind in making decisions that are needed NOW, not later, as in the case of \u201cThe Jane-Finch Project.\u201d Slow thinking is deliberate, it’s logical, and it requires collaborative input and more time and attention.<\/p>\n
I knew the people in Jane-Finch. I saw how, each day, the thousands of people in that community struggled in their concrete world. Mothers who wept for their children who were either paralyzed or killed due to thoughtless drive-bys had to live with the grief for the rest of their lives and continue to exist for their other children who needed them. I wanted to make a quick decision at that board room table. I had accountants, lawyers, and top percentile minds at the table wondering why I did not emphatically say \u201cYES! LET\u2019S DO THIS!\u201d and accept the money right there.<\/p>\n
I was struggling with saying yes. I needed to check myself; I didn\u2019t want to be too overconfident that money was going to solve this ongoing problem of gun violence and grief. Was I making an emotional decision because of the years of suffering I\u2019ve seen and I, myself experienced a different trauma that affected my family. Have I looked at both ways of thinking to make an undeniably \u2018BEST DECISION\u2019 for my people for \u201cThe Jane-Finch Project.\u201d I wanted ongoing, sustainable, resourced and long-term change. That\u2019s what I really wanted. From reading this book, I have the language to my process of decision-making that I\u2019m grateful for: Cognitive biases, Overconfidence, looking at the Pros and Cons of each system, and lastly, the role of Heuristics in decision-making (how mental shortcuts do help us, but it can lead to errors).<\/p>\n
I sat in front of my Board of Directors, feeling excited, incapable, and not as confident as I wanted to be because it was my time. It was my time to stick my neck out to challenge this team to think along the lines of long-term, sustainable change. It was not just about the project. It was about changing people\u2019s lives one person at a time from the Jane-Finch Projects. Who would ever care for these people enough to stay there, walk with them through the challenges and the wins not only through short-term initiatives but through long-term initiatives that considered and worked through true change that provided resources, processes for change management of not only this community but also for our Non-Profit? I wanted them to see throwing money in response to a heinous act of violence was not going to be a solution.<\/p>\n
A key takeaway was how we lean into a refined decision-making process. How do we lean into the urgent, and how do we make healthy, sustainable, meaningful, impactful decisions.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re all wondering what I chose to do with the one hundred thousand dollars offer, right? I asked for more! Yes, I did. I sat there and said, \u201cI will not launch this site because the money this year is not a gift that can keep that site running. If you are all serious about changing the world for these people we love so much, I need at least a 5-year commitment to this project. Are you all willing to provide what\u2019s necessary financially for our people in Jane and Finch? They emphatically said YES!<\/p>\n
End of Story.<\/p>\n
Thank you, Daniel Kahneman, for giving me the language for my decision-making process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two Speeds of Minds! I have been in the entrepreneurial world for many years. \u00a0I have been in the faith-based non-profit world for four decades and, more recently, the marketplace global tech world.\u00a0 It\u2019s been an absolute rush at times, yet I\u2019ve also experienced the world of bureaucracy, which kept my aspirational hopes and dreams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41087"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41090,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41087\/revisions\/41090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}