Helping individuals and organisations make wiser choices in a mad world.

We make around 35,000 decisions a day, that’s about 2,000 decisions an hour! Most decisions are relatively trivial, but some are important, and a few are critical! I’ve spent the last decade and a half researching critical decisions, the ones that make a difference to our lives and the lives of others. I’ve wanted to understand the dimensions of decisions which might be considered wise.

It's true there are physical limits to how much you can get your body to perform, particularly if you’re suffering from long-term fatigue. But you can extend the range of your batteries by focusing on one or more of the components of psychological energy. To extend the metaphor, you really have a hybrid power train made up of physical and psychological energy. When you feel like you’re running on empty, switch to your psychological electric engine!

There are times when things you were certain about and relied upon fall apart and dissolve before your eyes. What was so clear only days or weeks before turns to dust. “This isn’t the way it was meant to be” you cry out. What can you do in those moments?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is now in its 10th month and represents the largest land battle in Europe since the second world war. Ukraine is out-gunned and out-numbered, yet Russia is turning out to be Goliath to Ukraine’s David. What can we learn?

What can primate research tell us about human behaviour? After all, we’re basically smart monkeys who have lost our tails. Although maybe we’re not as smart as we’d like to think.

I was recently called in to be the psychologist in attendance when a multinational company announced it was closing its Australian business. We were ushered into the main trading floor on a cold and blustery day as the CEO read out a prepared statement to the 100 staff gathered there and dozens more online. The company was declared to be insolvent, and all operations were to be placed in the hands of the administrators. All jobs ceased, effective immediately.

As a psychologist seeing patients on Telehealth through those two years of lockdowns in Melbourne I got to hear stories of COVID casualty first hand. I’m now seeing the long tail of PTLS (Post-Traumatic Lockdown Syndrome), and I wonder if the casualties of COVID might have been ameliorated if governments had applied System 3 Thinking in their decision-making:

The term “human resources” is an anachronism. It goes back to the way military language was first used to describe position and responsibility in the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution. In the post-pandemic ways of working the term now looks as ridiculous as a beached boat after the tide has gone out. It may have sailed once. But it has lost its buoyancy. Why?

The Sydney Light Rail project was, and still is, a debacle. It was a singular idea floated by the New South Wales premier in 2012 and rushed through to secure another term for her government. But it became apparent that the state government had withheld information to get this signed off quickly.

Organisational culture impacts performance, but in the case of Boeing it literally impacted the ground, causing 346 deaths. How did the world’s largest aerospace company lose its way? Boeing’s problems go back to their takeover of McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

The financial services industry is based on a fantasy. The fantasy that money possesses inherent value. And the more you have the more valuable you are. That fantasy collapsed with the findings of the Australian Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry released in 2019.

Getting team agreement on a decision has always felt like herding cats. But it’s a bit trickier now with hybrid working. Not everyone is on the same page or even in the same window. So, here’s a way to refresh team decision making.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the biggest land war in Europe since WW2. Amidst the wanton destruction and violation of human life in return for territorial acquisition you can justifiably feel sorrow and anger and ask those who started this war, “just what were you thinking?”

There are plenty of reasons to be fearful and alarmed about the condition of our world. Perhaps these are unique conditions in human history. Or perhaps they’re the same wicked problems occurring over and over.

At a personal level, you can’t control what happens to you in life, but you can control your thinking, what you believe, what your values are, and what choices you make.

Communities everywhere are struggling with the frustration and fatigue of the COVID-19 pandemic after 18 months and counting. The social contract between government and the governed is fraying. We’re not all in this together. If anything, we’re in it because governments have made mistakes. So, is there another way of thinking that could help us out of this mess?

If I never hear or read the word “unprecedented” again it will be too soon. And I don’t want to hear “we’re all in this together”. We’re not. We’re in the same sea but in different boats. Some more seaworthy than others. No one could possibly understand what it’s like to endure 112 days of isolation as we did in Melbourne.

In 50 years time some historian will write about the global pandemic of 2020 and the consequent social, economic, and geo-political upheavals, but right now it feels like we're in the middle of an apocalyptic movie with no end in sight. And at almost every turn of events what's become glaringly obvious is that wisdom and wise decision making have been largely absent.

Associate Professor of Psychology, Igor Grossmann at The Wisdom and Culture Lab at The University of Ontario, Canada has been pivotal in establishing a practical framework for wise thinking that lends itself to coaching and mentoring. According to Grossmann and colleagues, “wise thinking is a skill. It is not simply an attribute of a person but rather a property of person-in-context. The potential for wise thinking emerges in the interaction of the person and their environment”.