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Streetlights and Shadows
Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making
Gary Klein
 Table of Contents and Sample Chapters
In making decisions, when should we go with our gut and when should we try to analyze every option? When should we use our intuition and when should we rely on logic and statistics? Most of us would probably agree that for important decisions, we should follow certain guidelines—gather as much information as possible, compare the options, pin down the goals before getting started. But in practice we make some of our best decisions by adapting to circumstances rather than blindly following procedures. In Streetlights and Shadows, Gary Klein debunks the conventional wisdom about how to make decisions. He takes ten commonly accepted claims about decision making and shows that they are better suited for the laboratory than for life. The standard advice works well when everything is clear, but the tough decisions involve shadowy conditions of complexity and ambiguity. Gathering masses of information, for example, works if the information is accurate and complete—but that doesn't often happen in the real world. (Think about the careful risk calculations that led to the downfall of the Wall Street investment houses.)
Klein offers more realistic ideas about how to make decisions in real-life settings. He provides many examples—ranging from airline pilots and weather forecasters to sports announcers and Captain Jack Aubrey in Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander novels—to make his point. All these decision makers saw things that others didn't. They used their expertise to pick up cues and to discern patterns and trends. We can make better decisions, Klein tells us, if we are prepared for complexity and ambiguity and if we will stop expecting the data to tell us everything.
A Bradford Book
About the Author
Gary Klein is a Senior Scientist at Applied Research Associates. He is the author of Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (1999) and the coauthor of Working Minds: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis (2006), both published by the MIT Press.
| "I know of no one who combines theory and observation—intellectual rigor and painstaking observation of the real world—so brilliantly and gracefully as Gary Klein."
—Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Blink
"Streetlights and Shadows is a fascinating study of leadership and adaptive decision making. It is absolutely relevant to the complex and uncertain strategic environment that we live and work in today. Gary Klein's work helps establish an important context that is essential to the effective growth and development of leaders and decision makers at all levels".
—Peter J. Schoomaker, General, US Army (Retired), Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army 2003-2007
"Streetlights and Shadows is based on decades of empirical scientific studies of experts and top professionals in a variety of domains that are important to business, industry, government, and society as a whole. Klein has done perhaps more than any other scientist to illuminate the mysteries of expert reasoning and human decision making in the 'real world'—that is, the world outside the laboratory. Using his distinctive story-telling style, Klein adroitly eviscerates myths and offers cogent explanations of human expertise and judgment. Cognitive Science may have found its Darwin in Gary Klein, a genuine explorer of the human cognitive landscape."
—Kenneth M. Ford, Director and CEO, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
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