Books reviewed:
Title: The Art of Decision-Making
Author: John S. S. Hammond, Ralph S. L. Keney, Howard Raifa
Translator: Wang Zhenglin
Publisher: Machinery Industry Press
Publication date: March 2024
If you are stuck in a decision-making dilemma and don't know how to make up your mind, for example, to fill in the college entrance examination for yourself/help your child, the book "The Art of Decision-making" should be able to help you.
The author of this book is not small, John S. Hammond is a professor at Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management. L. Gini is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a professor at the Marshall School of Business and the School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, and a professor at Harvard Business School.
The content of this book is not complicated, it gives eight elements to achieve smart decision-making, and teaches readers "hand-in-hand" through concise and clear explanations.
The eight factors are: Problem, Goal, Alternative, Outcome, Trade-off, Uncertainty, Risk Tolerance, and Associated Decision.
Let's take the college entrance examination as an example to apply the eight elements discussed in this book.
First, how do you define the problem correctly?
The reason why it is difficult to fill in the college entrance examination application is that the senior high school graduates aged 17-20 have not actually made decisions in similar complex situations before filling in the college entrance examination application. Although many of the children's parents have also filled in the application and gone to college, the effect is not necessarily good.
The difficulty of filling in the college entrance examination application lies in the fact that this is a process of common game selection by a large number of subjects, which contains a lot of misleading information and wrong information. On the one hand, social media has helped people to learn more about universities, majors, and graduation paths, but the right information often goes hand in hand with the wrong information.
We have a hard time choosing, often not because there is too little information, but because there is too much information. In this case, in order to achieve a smooth choice, it can generally only be achieved in special circumstances, such as the child's college entrance examination score is very high, so that there is no need to take the initiative to choose, and the famous school in Qingbei will take the initiative to contact and help analyze the major; For example, the child's score in the college entrance examination is not ideal, and the choice is relatively small.
So, to fill in the application, you must first understand the question itself: how do you plan to complete this decision? Do you want to do it independently, or do you want to participate with your children and parents, or do you need to find professional help from college entrance examination volunteer tutoring, or find relevant relatives and friends who have gone to college and have college experience to guide you? How much are you going to pay for volunteering, or do you have no intention of spending money at all and just want to get free, open information? Wait a minute. Also, is your understanding of the basic policy of college entrance examination admission, the basic model of the college entrance examination policy and the different levels of colleges and universities correct?
Second, how do you set the right goals?
You'll need to have a narrowed range of goals to help you decide what information to look for.
What kind of school to choose, what kind of major, whether to give priority to future employment or further study - by extension, whether the child's current academic ability, learning motivation, and the colleges and universities that the estimated college entrance examination score may go to support the child's future graduate or even doctoral studies;
Choose local employment as the first choice, or leave the current place of life as the first choice (such as going abroad or choosing Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) - if you choose Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, it is a transition for future work and development, and you will still return to your hometown or the provincial capital of your province in the future; It is still necessary to take root for a long time, whether to consider applying for the local civil service examination (which requires understanding the existing application conditions and professional characteristics of local civil servants) or starting a business and working in a large enterprise. Whether this involves buying a house in the local area, whether the family's financial resources can provide support, and so on.
The main majors of some colleges and universities are research-oriented, which means that students who choose these majors, if they do not change majors halfway, often need to study for a master's degree or even a doctorate, so that they can relatively smoothly enter the research institute or the industry's leading enterprises to work. The undergraduate level of this kind of major is likely to only choose the so-called "three unlimited" when choosing the position of the public examination: the corresponding major and position without the undergraduate level.
As the author of the book says, repeating the question, and constantly contributing to the precise definition of the question, will in itself narrow your options.
It must be pointed out that, as pointed out by the author of The Art of Decision-making, many people's decisions are ultimately proven wrong because they are too arbitrary and simplistic to delineate the list of goals, such as choosing only some so-called popular majors in the college entrance examination, such as those related to popular science and technology such as AI and genetic engineering, or only considering Chinese language and literature majors that are most closely related to the entrance examination.
The authors suggest that the following five steps can be followed in the process of establishing and identifying goals: The first step is to write down all the things you want to focus on in the decision-making process, for example, what is the worst possible outcome if it turns out that you have chosen the wrong major?
The second step is to convert your concerns and core demands into the most concise goals, which are specific to the college entrance examination volunteer application, that is, "become a scientist" and "work in a large company like Huawei".
The third step is to separate the end from the means to determine your root goal. It's about asking yourself "why" until you find that you can't ask anymore. For example, some people are mentioned to volunteer to fill in the college entrance examination, and they will choose their majors according to the goal of the future public examination, but if you ask all the way, you will find that he (she) is actually afraid of excessive competition and even very social fear because of the stable job and life, and is completely unaware of the difficulties and challenges of civil servants, especially grassroots civil servants.
The fourth step is to clarify what each goal means to you. The fifth step is to test your goal and see if it is your new stock.
Third, prepare options.
When it comes to volunteering for the college entrance examination, a very common mistake is that parents will refer to their siblings (that is, the child's aunt, aunt, uncle) and other relatives and friends who are close to each other to apply for the college entrance examination and the career development of these relatives and friends to choose colleges and majors for their children.
Some relatives and friends who have been successful in politics or business, or in the arts and culture, do not prove that they or she were right in the first place. He or she may well have been forced to accept the fact that he or she had made a mistake and redouble his or her efforts to reverse the situation. Many people, after achieving achievements and successes, like to rationalize their past experiences, which is bound to be quite misleading.
In the process of choosing a major, according to the point of view of the book "The Art of Decision-making", candidates should still choose alternative majors according to their own ability endowment, growth potential, interest and test score characteristics.
To prepare an alternative, it is necessary to carefully study the degree of compatibility and reputation of the institution and major. Many majors are interpreted by the college entrance examination volunteer counselors as extremely difficult to find employment, which is actually only a summary of the employment situation of graduates of colleges and universities that have set up these majors, and cannot represent the general. Similarly, if the teachers and experimental resources of the school are not dominant, and the quality of graduate training is more worrying, and the market acceptance is not high, if the teachers and experimental resources of the school are not dominant, and the initial opening is just to follow the trend, the quality of graduate training is more worrying, and the market acceptance is not high.
Fourth, understand the preliminarily selected filing scheme; Fifth, weigh the pros and cons of each other, both of which are easy to understand.
Sixth, clarify uncertainties.
That is to say, it is necessary to form a judgment on the future direction of the chosen major, and to form an expectation for the growth state of the child who chooses a certain major in the next four (five) years, and to consider many uncertainties, such as whether there is a major risk in terms of policy or technical expectations that will lead to the loss of market space for graduates of the major, even faculty and experts; Another example is the number of colleges and universities of the same level across the country, the approximate size of the enrollment scale, and the number of people employed in the domestic market and the markets of neighboring countries that may absorb graduates from Chinese universities.
Seventh, assess risk tolerance realistically.
That is to say, if the child does choose the wrong major, and has not changed majors in a few years of college, and has not been admitted to graduate school when he graduates, it is difficult to find employment, and there is no condition to take the public examination, can the family help the child find another way out?
In fact, for some children from ordinary families, if they choose some popular majors, they must seriously consider the corresponding profession of this major, and whether they are also open to graduates of other majors or even unrelated majors, and the threshold is too low. Because although some professions are good careers, because the threshold is not too high or even very low, graduates of the corresponding majors need to face more competition than expected.
Eighth, consider the decisions that are linked.
To put it simply, it is to predict the prediction of others, and to predict whether others will continue to predict after predicting yours. Some emerging industries and industries have a strong demand for professionals in certain subdivisions, but the demand is not high.