Gary A. Klein - Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions

20th Anniversary Edition

Gary Klein

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

First MIT Press paperback edition, 1999

1998 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Sabon LT Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Klein, Gary A., author.

Title: Sources of power : how people make decisions / Gary Klein.

Description: 20th Anniversary Edition. | Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, [2017] |

Revised edition of the author's Sources of power, c1998. | Includes

bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017006485 | ISBN 9780262534291 (pbk. : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262343237

Subjects: LCSH: Decision making.

Classification: LCC HD30.23 .K456 2017 | DDC 658.4/03--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017006485

ePub Version 1.0

For

Helen Gail

Devorah

Rebecca

1.1 The Torn Artery

2.1 The Falling Billboards

3.1 The Laundry Chute Fire

3.2 The Overpass Rescue

3.3 The Christmas Fire

4.1 The Sixth Sense

4.2 The Mystery of the HMS Gloucester

5.1 The Car Rescue

5.2 The Libyan Airliner

5.3 The IRA Terrorist

5.4 The Trademaster and the Pisces

5.5 The Disoriented Physicists

6.1 The Circling F-4s

6.2 The Flight of the Airbus

7.1 The Denver Bullets

7.2 The AWACS Weapons Directors

8.1 Bubbling with Life

8.2 Holding Firm

8.3 The Impossible Crossing Points

8.4 The Flight to Philadelphia

9.1 Learning to Love Telemarketing

9.2 DONALD + GERALD = ROBERT

10.1 The Instructors Who Couldnt Save Their Own Lives

10.2 Recipe for Disaster

11.1 The Case of the Infant Whose Heart Wasn't Beating Eighty Times a Minute

11.2 The Magic Bullet

11.3 The Case of the Seasonal Short

11.4 The Misleading Manuals

11.5 The Case of the Mangled Proceedings

12.1 Sizing Up the Ducts

12.2 Pressurizing the Hydraulic System

12.3 Rejecting an Analogue That Is Identical

12.4 Predicting the Attendance at a Movie Theater

12.5 A Case Where AWACS Was the Wrong Analogue

12.6 Bidders Associate

13.1 The Escape of the Goeben

13.2 Combat Inside the Cockpit

13.3 The Fatal Tug-of-War

13.4 My Safety Net

13.5 Marvin's Mouse

13.6 The Soldiers Who Were Trained Not to Follow Orders

13.7 The Flight Mismanagement System

14.1 The Case of the De-Generators

14.2 The Best Teams: Wildland Firefighters

14.3 The Reaction Time of a Crisis Management Team

14.4 The Crisis Manager Who Became Less Than a Secretary

14.5 The Firefighters Who Realized They Weren't Supposed to Fight Fires

14.6 The Crisis Management Team That Loved to Caucus

14.7 The Leader Who Vanished

14.8 The Illusion of Rationality

15.1 The Case of the Missing Contact Lens

16.1 The Missed Diagnosis

3.1 Recognition-Primed Decision Model

3.2 Integrated Version of Recognition-Primed Decision Model

5.1 Truck Levitation

5.2 Transition Sequence

5.3 Generic Model of Mental Simulation

5.4 Using Mental Simulation to Generate an Explanation

5.5 Using Mental Simulation to Project into the Future

5.6 Track Lines of Trademaster and Pisces

6.1 The Harassing F-4s: How the Situation Was Perceived as It Evolved

6.2 Map Detail of the Vincennes Incident

7.1 Integrated Version of Recognition-Primed Decision Model

9.1 Nonlinear Account of Problem Solving

10.1 Average Move Quality of Masters and Class B Players, Regulation and Blitz Rules

10.2 Poor Moves for Masters and Class B Players, Regulation and Blitz Rules

10.3 Quality Ratings of First Moves and All Legal Moves

10.4 Objective Evaluation of the First Chess Move Generated

11.1 Finding the Hidden Restriction in the Misleading Manuals

14.1 Advanced Team Decision-Making Model

16.1 How Uncertainty Leads to Doubt

17.1 Sources of Power

3.1 Categories of the Decisions Studied

6.1 The Vincennes Shootdown: Story Discrepancies

7.1 Boundary Conditions for Different Decision Strategies

7.2 Frequency of RPD Strategies across Domains

10.1 Aspects of Knowledge Engineering

13.1 Functions of Communicating Intent

I have been fortunate in working with good people on good projects. I thank the friends and colleagues who helped me shape the content of this book. In a class by himself is Buzz Reed, the chief executive officer of my company. He had the patience to scrutinize several drafts, searching for inconsistencies, weak arguments, and ways of improving the overall quality of the chapters. He also provided important encouragement for me throughout the writing process, including his support for a sabbatical in Jerusalem, where I wrote the first draft of the manuscript.

Barbara Law deserves special thanks for her careful editing of each draft. She worked at both the microlevel to make sure the details were accurate and the macrolevel to prevent implications of text changes in one place from contradicting statements made elsewhere. Mary Alexander showed great patience in weaving together edits and modifications in producing one draft after another.

A number of people helped review and improve the technical content. I appreciate the feedback I received from Rebecca Pliske, Julia Pounds, Lee Beach, Jens Rasmussen, Mike Doherty, Caroline Zsambok, Beth Crandall, Marvin Thordsen, Steve Wolf, Leon Segal, Stuart Dreyfus, Bill Irving, and Dave Klinger.

I am also thankful for the help in editing provided by Devorah Klein, Rebecca Klein, Karen Getchell-Reiter, Diane Chiddester, Ken Clark, Michael Ames, Paula John, and Rose Olszewski. Debbie Goessl, Teresa Laney, Tom Scruggs, Betsy Knight, Jason Chrenka, and Sharon Murray also helped with manuscript production.

I must also acknowledge the impact of Hubert Dreyfus on the naturalistic decision making approach to research that I have taken. In 1976 I read Dreyfuss book What Computers Cant Do and realized that his critique of the Artificial Intelligence position was also a critique of the information-processing account of cognition and expertise. My decision to start a research company in 1978 was largely stimulated by my desire to work out the implications of his views. I have benefited from his ideas and friendship for over twenty years.

In addition, I appreciate all the contract monitors who funded the research projects described in this book and helped drive the different aspects of the framework. Those deserving special mention are Judith Orasanu, Michael Drillings, Michael Kaplan, Milt Katz, Jeff Grossman, Dennis Leedom, Owen Jacobs, Ken Boff, Steve Snyder, Ed King, Susan Ede, Ellen Martz, Dave Artman, Paul Van Riper, Bill Vaughan, Gerry Malecki, Mike McFarren, Marie Gomes, Josephine Randel, Steve LeClair, Ray Perez, Angelo Mirabella, Jack Thorpe, Jim Banks, Stan Halpin, Jon Fallesen, Rex Michel, Ed Salas, Jan Cannon-Bowers, Ev Palmer, George Brander, Larry Miller, Hugh Wood, Carol Bouma, Bob Eggleston, John Lemmer, Fumiya Tanabe, and Ron Lofaro.