Two Dominant Models for Making Decisions - Pros and Cons

The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of the decisions we make about how to move into the future. There are two dominant models for how to make those decisions. The first is the heroic-visionary model. In this model, a leader sees further into the future than everybody else. He goes with his instincts. He takes big risks and makes bold choices. This model seems inspiring and romantic until the heroic leader leads you off a cliff. Napoleon seemed all-knowing until he pursued his invasion of Russia into the wintertime. The failures of the heroic model induced people to come up with an opposite approach, which we’ll call [the second model]the technocratic model. The technocrat is taught not to go with his gut but instead to use reason, amass data, and weigh evidence using a formal and impersonal decision-making methodology, like a decision tree, matrix, or spreadsheet. This is the kind of decision-making process that often gets taught in business schools. It seems so sober and scientific. The problem is that the world is complicated, and most of it cannot be quantified and put into a spreadsheet. You wind up with Robert McNamara leading a disastrous war in Vietnam. You wind up with all those finely trained executives at Kodak who didn’t foresee that the future of photography was going to be digital. In their own bland way, the technocrats can be even more arrogant than the heroic visionaries because they don’t have any humanistic insight into how people behave.... David Brooks https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/make-better-decisions-trimmer/686522/ America Needs a Trimmer