The Secret Of Snap Decisions

There is not enough time or space here to fully assess the mystifying process of Thin Slicing. Best defined as one's ability to use our internal computation to arrive at rapid conclusions, through which a little bit of knowledge, takes us a long way. I highly recommend casting back to Mal Gladwell's book "Blink," which exposed us to case studies of thin-slicing applied. From military war games to pivotal moments in business, our acquired sense for processing a combination of observation, instinct, raw data, and a sixth sense about a situation, result in thin slicing our way to a decisive outcome.

Once Vic Braden, then one of the world's top tennis coaches, began to notice something strange when he watched a match. If you've played tennis you know players are given two chances to successfully hit a serve, and if they miss on the second chance, they "double fault." What Braden began to notice was that he always knew when a player was about to double fault. Further, having developed this uncanny predictive skill, Braden could make this call with players he'd never seen before! Braden was not "lucky," since 'luck' is winning the lottery. Braden could simply call it every time: "Oh no, double fault coming." This began to haunt Braden since he had no explanation. Braden couldn't identify howhe knew ... just that he was always right, regardless of the match or the player.

In 2006 young Heath Moore found himself in an improbable job as he began selling Rolls Royce and Bentley. Heath had never sold a car, nor had he much training beyond the rare history of these specialty British-made cars. "I'll give you a shot," said the skeptical sales manager, "but selling Rolls and Bentley requires a lot of seasoning. Odds are against you!" Yet soon, young Moore began to notice that he possessed an uncanny hidden ability to read the room; w bias or any background whatsoever, he was able to rapidly compute the degree of interest in a customer. He could sort through false signals such as how someone was dressed, their speech pattern, or even the car they drove to the dealership. He also found pathways toward trust and concern for his potential customers, based on a sort of sixth sense for what reallyfrightened or motivated them. Within a year, he had broken the dealership's records for Rolls and Bentley sales and soon thereafter, ranked among the lines' top sales executives in the world. How was it possible for a young man who had never sold a raffle ticket to suddenly find himself in such lofty air? Thin-slicing helped Heath edit out the impressions that didn't matter: physical appearance, grammar, previous car history and such, exchanged for actionable thoughts and conclusions.

In "Blink," Gladwell offered an account of decorated Marine maverick Paul Van Riper,

who was chosen to lead "Red Team" in a Pentagon Middle East war-gaming exercise. Van Riper's guerrilla team was tossed together, deliberately not given many high-tech resources (GPS, computer mapping prints, or 3-D data models), while Blue Team was overloaded with them.

Instead of ponderous battle analysis, Van Riper simply thin-sliced, anticipating what the Blue Team was capable of doing; what they might do. Van Riper's lean, mean, Red Team's ambush completely surprised Blue, derailing their battle plan and even though heavily advantaged, sent them into defensive withdrawal.

Our ability to thin slice must first berecognized, then cultivated as a skill. In radio programming where competitive attacks are the norm, it's our people against theirs. Thin slicing when it matters most can make all the difference!