Introduction

In his '50s, after leaving the White House, President Theodore Roosevelt was faced with the opportunity to explore the Amazon in South America. The journey down the appropriately named River of Doubt (now Rio Roosevelt) was a prospect that was fraught with danger and almost killed his son Kermit. This was a time when the twenty-sixth U.S. president could have basked in the glory of his past achievements, writing his memoirs and putting his presidential library in order. A careful and calculating decision maker might have weighed the risks against the opportunity and wisely decided to stay at home. Roosevelt was not that kind of man. You can almost hear him responding enthusiastically with a single word: "Bully!" He said the trip made him feel like a boy again.¹

There is an underlying assumption in much of the decision-making literature that making decisions should be based on a rational process. We know that it isn't, but these detours from rationality are usually seen as obstacles to effective decision making. And they certainly can be. Rational approaches also represent the part of decision making that is most easily trainable. We can recognize how problems such as overconfidence or groupthink cloud our judgment, as we will consider later in this book. It is important to recognize these challenges, particularly for large decisions that need to be carefully thought out. But it is also important to recognize that none of this would have led Roosevelt into the Amazon, for better or worse, or to the other wild successes of his hard-riding career.

This aspect of decision making is captured in the popular MasterCard commercials. While we can put price tags on some things, others defy this process. You might see Roosevelt tallying up the risks and costs of his trip on one side—the boat, the guides, the mosquito netting. On the other side would be the chance for a 50-something-year-old man to feel like a boy again: priceless.

This is what is so shocking about Malcolm Gladwell's observations in Blink.² He shows how a moment's intuition can sometimes be better than months of study and careful analysis. We can't assume that every decision can—or should—be made in this intuitive way. Shooting from the hip can sometimes get you killed. In Th!nk, a book-long response to Gladwell, author Michael LeGault blames fast and loose, nonlogical thinking for everything from declining student performance to failures of emergency response to the potential collapse of civilization.³ There are hard problems that demand a more rational approach. Diagnosing and solving problems in a system or machine usually benefits from a rational approach. You may want your auto mechanic to have good intuition, but you also want him to be able to hook up the engine to a computer to find out what's wrong.

On the other hand, as we will consider in some of the Truths of this book, we tend to be somewhat risk averse as a species, and a systematic and logical approach may actually make us overcautious. By all means, look the decision squarely in the face. Consider it from every angle. But also focus on the intangibles that might be harder to place into a systematic equation of risks and returns. After you've done all this careful analysis, step back. Ask yourself: What would Teddy Roosevelt have done? If you hear the word "Bully!" going through your head, maybe the crazy decision is the right one. Don't underestimate the power of deciding boldly.

As Roosevelt said, "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."