Destroy Your Project Early, Then Conduct a Pre-Mortem!

You come to consciousness in great pain. You are lying on the ground on your back. Through fuzzy vision, you see the sky - and two paramedics frantically working on you. Isn't it great to know that they don't make decisions the way your organization does?

You should be, because there are definitely some problems with how groups make decisions, groups like those that help you develop project plans and implement those plans. Cognitive scientists are discovering more efficient ways to make group decisions by studying paramedics, who also work as a team and make decisions quickly based on complex sets of criteria.

Paramedics make decisions differently than the classic group decision-making model used in business. You are familiar with the classic model: A group of experts sits down to make a decision. They list options and contrast them along a list of criteria. The option that gets the most favorable total rating on the criteria is the one that is chosen. The classic model has an informal manifestation where decisions are made by consensus.

Paramedics do not plod through a list of options, yet they are more successful than expected in such situations, even though they are under extreme time constraints. Evidently, through experience they have developed a professional instinct that limits options subconsciously to a "most effective" list. Then each of …