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Whirl a ball on a string (in outer space, where gravity has negligible influence). Let go of the string. How does the ball fly?

Ask a child, or an adult who has little formal education in physics, and they’ll tell you the ball will follow a curved path. Anyone who knows Newton’s laws of motion, or who has whirled a ball on a string and let it fly, knows that isn’t the case. The ball’s trajectory will, of course, be a straight line.

If trusting your gut gives you the wrong answer for a question this simple, it’s unlikely to be more reliable when you’re faced with a more difficult challenge — say, selecting a piece of software for the enterprise. Yet recent research by psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis of the University of Amsterdam and a team of colleagues provides evidence that the opposite is the case.

Dijksterhuis created two car-buying situations — in each, college students had to choose from among four fictional automobiles. In one, they were given four attributes. In the other, they were given twelve.

In each case, Dijksterhuis distracted half of the research subjects during the four minutes made available for the decision (Dijksterhuis apparently likes the number 4), while allowing the others to spend their time thinking. With four attributes, thinkers slightly outperformed non-thinkers. With twelve attributes, those prevented from thinking made, on the whole, better choices.

It would seem that, faced with a choice between SAP and Oracle, you’d do best by having each company throw a lot of facts at you while you’re thoroughly distracted by other matters — perhaps, a crossword puzzle. As soon as you finish the puzzle, you should choose whichever piece of software seems best to you.

I don’t think so. But if this isn’t the case, how should we interpret Dijksterhuis’s research?

A definitive answer will require more research. In its absence, here’s how I’d assess the situation:

People aren’t born knowing how to make evidence-based decisions when multiple factors are involved, and few students receive formal training in it. Why would we? It’s merely one of the most important life and business skills we all need on a regular basis.

This explains the superiority of “instinct” (really, non-linear, pattern-based decision-making) in Dijksterhuis’s experiment.

Most people, faced with a decision, don’t put much thought into how they’re going to make it. Even if the 80 college students who made up Dijksterhuis’s sample universe were the exceptional sort who do, the experiment created an artificial situation that prevented it from happening.

There’s a difference between having time to worry about a decision and having a planned framework for making it. Look at how the research was constructed. The investigators pushed a lot of information at subjects who were unprepared to receive it.

Compare that circumstance to how you, as an IT professional, would go about making an important decision. First, you’d create a framework for making it. You’d establish categories of information, specific questions for each category, and figure out in advance which answers to each question are preferable. You’d take control of information-gathering so you’d be prepared to record and understand the answers. Probably, you’d establish a way to turn answers into numbers and aggregate the results, to facilitate comparison of the alternatives.

Then you’d make a rational, informed, evidence-based decision.

In Dijksterhuis’s experiment, it isn’t all that surprising that, faced with information overload and a lack of clarity about what’s important and why, time simply created more opportunity for second-guessing. As is so often the case, the results of scientific research (information overload creates confusion) were used to reach a conclusion that’s more appealing than warranted (gut instinct is superior to thinking).

Is this the fault of the researcher? In this case, yes. Those who perform research are best equipped to explain its limitations, and are responsible for doing so. It appears Ap Dijksterhuis has done the opposite: He sensationalized the results, extending the mythology of human “instinct” (a mis-use of a term better reserved for inborn knowledge) in the bargain.

You can be sure that sometime in the not-too-distant future, your life will become more difficult in consequence. The popular and business press have reported this research, so it’s only a matter of time before a swarm of business consultants, eager to pander to those inclined to buy advice that fits their preconceived notions, will sell “instinctive decision-making for business executives” to their clients.

And intellectual relativism will have made another inroad into a society already predisposed to favor personal preference over evidence.

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When discussing the institution of strong business processes, we consultants have been known to use the term “hero” disparagingly.

It isn’t that we think poorly of the heroes themselves. Those who overcome significant obstacles to create important results deserve nothing but praise. What we’re denigrating is the need for heroics — of creating an environment that requires employees to overcome barriers that exist only because company management hasn’t been willing to invest in their removal. Or worse, that exist only because company management has placed them there.

Which brings us to some more lessons from hurricane Katrina and its aftermath (see “Katrina Lessons,” 9/12/2005).

In the midst of watching the president and Congress argue over which of their dueling analyses is better (but why, exactly, was creating two competing analyses a good use of taxpayer dollars?) comes a valuable reminder to all of us who recommend the institution of well-designed, continuously improving, Lean, Six-Sigma-compliant, Theory-of-Constraints-aware processes: Who you hire is more important than how you design the work.

The proof is simple and syllogistic. It’s often ignored, too — perhaps because processes, being designable, documentable, objectively measurable, and without egos, personalities and feelings, are easier to deal with than human beings. Here it is:

My major premise is that the wrong people can, and usually do mess up even the best processes.

My minor premise is that the right people can achieve excellent results, even when shackled with abominable processes.

My conclusion is that having the right people is more important than having the right processes.

Q. E. D.

Logical proof is nice. Evidence is more persuasive. Which brings us to the President’s report. As described in a Washington Post article by Stephen Barr ( “Acts of Heroism Shine Through Homeland Security’s Humiliation,” Friday, February 24, 2006; B02), acts of heroism achieved important results in spite of the general lack of preparation, processes and procedures that characterized the overall response to Katrina. For example:

Coast Guard Petty Officer Jessica Guidroz, who herself had lost everything she owned, led a squadron of eight boats and crews that evacuated about 2,000 people from the University of New Orleans.

Petty Officer Moises Rivera-Carrion, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, was on duty for three solid days. He dodged downed power lines and contaminated floodwaters to rescue 269 survivors trapped on rooftops and balconies throughout the region.

Then there was Coast Guard Petty Officer Rodney L. Gordon. He was the first to fly into New Orleans, in the face of strong winds and wind-blown debris. Cannibalizing broken gear for parts, he personally rewired emergency generators to get the Naval Air Station control tower up and running. Had he failed to do so, hundreds of lifesaving missions would not have flown.

Three heroes among many. The important question is the extent to which heroics should have been required, not the heroism itself.

For Katrina I’ll leave the answer to the dueling investigating committees. For IT, and how managers should think about and plan such matters:

Professionals divide problems into two categories: Foreseen problems and foreseen unforeseen problems. Professionals plan for the unexpected.

Amateurs, in contrast, deal with foreseen problems and unforeseeable unforeseen problems. Figuring bad things only happen to other people, and on someone else’s watch, is the mark of an amateur.

Then there are those who conduct the post mortem. Too often, they see only foreseen problems and foreseeable unforeseen problems. They consider the latter — the ones planners should have anticipated but failed to — unforgivable. They’re especially so because it usually turns out they were foreseen — just not by the people responsible for planning, who chose to ignore those who recognized the risk in question.

But people aren’t perfect; there’s no clear line separating foreseeable and unforeseeable problems; some of those who warn of impending catastrophes are right by accident, not expertise; and forgiveness — the flip side of blame — has no point. What matters is following three inviolable rules of the professional planner: (1) Anticipate and plan for what you can; (2) expect the unexpected and provide for it; and (3) use post mortems to drive improvement, not to find fault.

In your contingency planning, remember this lesson from Katrina. It won’t help you pass a Sarbanes-Oxley or CobiT audit, but it will help you survive your next contretemps. It is:

Your last, best hope when the unexpected happens is to have hired and retained employees who have the ingenuity, maturity and courage to assess the situation in front of them and take whatever action is necessary.

Doing so isn’t an alternative to having the right processes and procedures. It’s merely more important.

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