Gary Klein

Excellent points and a good description of the varieties of insights and conditions that foster them. Sadly, the author has taken the "make your point through stories" to an extreme. Where 2-3 vignettes to provide context would have been powerful, the snowstorm of examples he provides to support even the smallest observation detracts from his points and gets downright irritating.

Okay, but not great. The biggest take-aways for me were captured in a couple of the few figures in the book: the visual formula with the up and down arrows (the former being increasing insights, the latter being decreasing errors and uncertainty) and the chart depicting the Three-Path Model (with the contradiction path, the connection path, and the creative desperation path). I'd like to see more in the future about constructive approaches to generating more insights. The author only seemed show more to give lukewarm effort in this area, seeming to feel that there were too many obstacles to success. show less

I enjoy Gary Klein's work because it resonates with my own experiences in decision making. What makes it useful is that he has spent a great deal of time in analyzing these processes and organizing them into a consistent thesis. He provides many examples and practical exercises to illustrate and reinforce the principles that he has identified.

The material in this book is excellent, and I particularly benefited from the the discussion on Recognition Primed Decisions (RPD), the use of decision show more games as a tool to foster and analyze intuitive decision making and the aspect of "executive intent" which is important for defining the scope and goals of intuitive decision makers.

The book is replete with examples, in fact there were so many in some cases that I found them to be irritating because they do tend to interrupt the flow of thought, but this was, perhaps, their intent. The many practical exercises would make this a useful manual in a workshop on decision making. show less

Hmmmm. Some interesting stories and anecdotes. Useful for a different perspective and to stimulate thought but not really very insightful or of limited practical value. I did however enjoy the book so it depends if you want to rate it for the enjoyment of the experience or for gaining useful insights. As a reading experience it is 3.5 stars - for the impression the title conveys - only 3 stars