A prescription for better decisions
A toolkit beyond bias-spotting for sharper everyday decisions.
The book's central chapter widens out from the shop floor to ideas from leadership, organisational psychology and coaching. It starts with a skill ladder running from novice to expert, arguing that what separates the top rungs is metacognitive skill rather than stored facts. From there it gathers practical levers. Emotions are treated as data that move through a team. Nudges and habit cues are put to work, like the etched fly in the Schiphol urinal. Visible and cognitive diversity in multidisciplinary teams is harnessed through devices such as anonymous voting. Risk is communicated in numbers rather than vague words, and spaced repetition with logbooks builds personal and institutional memory.
Three takeaways
- Expertise is defined by metacognitive skill, not stored knowledge
- Emotions are contagious and shape decisions, so manage them openly
- Cognitive diversity and equal talking time lift team decisions
Reflection
Questions for this chapter
Prompts to consider on your own, in a journal club or in a teaching session. All questions are optional, so you can read them without submitting anything. If you choose to submit answers, they are collected through Google Forms.