A couple of years ago, the city of New York again found itself in the news. This time, it was a collapsed steam pipe that disintegrated beneath an ordinary tow truck, sending a geyser of boiling water and steam hundreds of feet into the air. The emergency crews that responded had to act rapidly and decisively to rescue the tow truck driver as well as tend to other people at the scene and get the flow of water under control.

Gary Klein studied how emergency and military personnel make decisions under the kinds of stresses that the broken steam main created. When he began his research, detailed in his book Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, one of the firefighters he was interviewing told him: “I don’t make decisions. I don’t remember when I’ve ever made a decision.” As it turns out, firefighters do make decisions, lots of them, and those decisions are made so rapidly that they are simply not aware of it.

Emergency personnel and other people in crisis situations use time-pressured, super decisive, act-now sorts of decision making. For example, a fire fighter responding to the broken steam pipe arrives on the scene, assesses the situation,  and acts or gives orders. In those moments (often just seconds), he or she is using knowledge and experience to determine what to do and what might occur. The synthesis can happen so quickly that it almost appears to be ESP. For example, Klein tells of a fire fighter  who ordered his men out of a burning building without really knowing why he was giving the order; seconds later, the floor they’d been standing on collapsed.

According to Klein, people use four “sources of power” to make these rapid decisions.

• Intuition which is the synthesis of knowledge & experience and converting that synthesis into action. The synthesis is almost instant and is not accompanied by conscious thought. It is sometimes experiences as a “knowing.”
• Mental simulation: Imagining how something might work--what to do and what the results would be.
• Metaphor: Comparing the current situation to past experience or knowledge to the current situation, looking for parallels. Metaphor differs from intuition because it is more thoughtful and conscious.
• Storytelling: Debriefing aloud to solidify insight, learning, and understanding of past experience. Storytelling shares the process of decision-making with others allowing them to have the experience available as future metaphor. It also allows the teller to review what went wrong and what went right in view of the next time a similar situation might be encountered.

Klein calls this sort of decision making “naturalistic.” Naturalistic decision making is most often required when there is little or no time for contemplation or planning along with inadequate or incomplete information about the situation at hand, sometimes poorly defined goals and outcomes, and a need for rapid innovation to create novel procedures, solutions or approaches to resolve the situation. The context for naturalistic decision making is often a situation that is embedded in something deeper--a big picture--that has its own set of goals, tasks and requirements. Naturalistic decisions are often made under great uncertainty and under rapidly changing conditions. The situation may also be complicated by stressors like fatigue and emotion along with external factors such as distractions, interruptions, weather conditions, light, temperature, etc.

The decision makers themselves must possess experience and knowledge (the more the better), be adept at “cue learning” which allows them to find patterns and notice distinctions amongst often ambiguous and noisy data. Finally, Klein found that high stakes naturalistic decision making takes place in a group setting. Most often there are multiple actors (and thus, decision makers) who must coordinate intake of information, analysis of pattern, and synthesis of the four “sources” into coherent and effective action.

The naturalistic bit comes from the distinction that Klein makes between what decision makers under fire really do (naturalistic) versus what theoreticians think that people do (which is analytical, linear, and comparative). In reality, decision making is much messier and must take place far too quickly to allow careful analysis, comparison of options, and a systematic planning and execution of actions.

You, too, can access the sources of power that are used in high stakes, life or death decision making.

• Intuition is developed from experience. The more experience you accumulate, the better your intuition will become. Intuition isn’t some airy-fairy, woowoo notion. It’s a very real activity that you can engage in everyday. By paying attention to when your “gut” speaks up and what you know, you can fine tune and develop a great ability to know what you know faster.
• Mental simulation is simply imagining. One of the things that Klein points out is that decision-makers get stuck when they hit the limits of their imaginations. When they can’t imagine how something might work, they can’t move forward. In your world, the more imaginative and creative you are, the more likely you’ll be able to access the power of mental simulation. Get outside the box, seek other perspectives. What you can’t imagine, someone else may be able to. Ask them.
• Metaphor is powerful because you are making comparisons and drawing distinctions. This is part of mindful learning and research shows that mindful learning significantly increases what’s remembered later on. To use metaphor, ask yourself what does the current situation remind you of? How is it different? How is the situation relevant to you or someone else? Don’t wait for a crisis to engage this sort of thinking. The more you practice it now, the better you’ll be at using it when something goes wrong.
• The final piece of the puzzle is the debrief or storytelling. If you can’t review what happened with someone, at least take the time to make notes. As I’ve noted earlier, research shows that debriefing allows you to learn more now and perform better later on.

The next time you see a fire truck barreling down the highway or a video clip of emergency personnel on television, take a moment to think about what you’re watching. The bravery and courage that these men and women exhibit, their lighting fast responses, and their decisive actions save lives every single day. The sources of power that they use to make decisions can be yours, too.