Recently I saw an interview with the reigning chess world champion, Magnus Carlsen. He was asked what makes him so good at chess. He says it’s about the way he makes his decisions, and it’s quite different from what we may expect. 

Chess has the image that players are thinking through their decision very deeply, where they think several moves ahead. It seems like decisions are highly rational, well thought through, and intentional. Magnus Carlsen has a different take on it:

 

You need to make decisions quickly based on your intuition. If you can’t do this, you will start to see danger and risk everywhere that isn’t there, and you miss out on opportunities. It’s often hard to know if you make the right decision but it’s still important to have confidence. Often you miss something, and it later turns out that this wasn’t important, and your intuition was right to make the fast decision.

 

If we’re slow with decisions, our perception of risks is going up. I can see this happening in my decision making frequently. If I don’t do something quickly, it doesn’t get done at all, because I talk myself out of it. Does this ring true for your decision making and for how decisions get made in you organizations? 

Are you sometimes putting off decisions because you don’t have all the information? Have you ever experienced that the longer you wait the more you concerns come to your mind about the decision?

Carlsen was also asked to comment on two matches he played against a previous world champion, Kasparov. One of the games he played, when he was 13 and he lost, the second one he played at age 17, and he won.

 

When I played Kasparov at age 13 I wasn’t sure of myself. I thought too deeply about each move. If he had had more confidence I would have won. When I was 17, I had the confidence. You need to have the belief that you can compete with anybody.

You have to trust yourself, your instinct and your experience. If you can’t do this, you won’t go far. It’s tough if you always second-guess yourself. [emphasis added]

 

Take the next step

 

Pay attention to your own decision making this week. Notice how the sense of risk sets in when we slow down with a decision. Try and make the decision before your thinking gets stuck.

If you want to get to the bottom of how you’re overrating the risks, keep a journal of the decision where you hesitate. Write down the situation, your decision and the risk you saw. Check back later to see if the risk was real or imagined.