The Decision Intelligence Handbook

Foreword

When this book’s authors first asked me to write this foreword, I answered with a soft “no.”

Although I have often spoken of the need for system change in service of sustainability objectives, and am often told I am a system thinker, it doesn’t feel that way. If you recall Robert Pirsig’s long-ago book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he distinguished between “romantics”—people who love riding a Harley until it breaks, then kick it as they stalk off down the road—and “mechanics,” who hunker down and try to fix the machine. I warned Pratt and Malcolm that I am more of a romantic than a mechanic, at a time when we need more mechanics.

Romantics, I believe, will always exist and will often be needed, but true systemic change—whether toward sustainability or simply to adapt to the complexities facing modern enterprises—increasingly needs mechanical talent. And that, bluntly, has never been me.

Undeterred, the authors doubled down, explaining that I’d hit on exactly the point of decision intelligence and of this book. Indeed, if we are to effectively galvanize ourselves to meet the level of change and disruption now required, we will need the perspectives of both the mechanic and the creative, working together.

We live in an age where two forces are colliding. First, as often happens during scientific and technological revolutions, increased specialization is creating barriers between disciplines: the exponential innovator struggles to communicate with the economist, ...