ESSAY QUESTION:
"In making a complex decision, one should trust experience more than instinct."
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the position stated above. Support your viewpoint using reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
MY RESPONSE:
The issue of relying on experience instead of instinct is controversial. On one hand, experience should be the judging factor before making easy solutions to the complex problems, On the other hand, instinct might prove to be useful sometimes but cannot be considered when situation is complex. In my opinion, experience should be given an edge over instinct in such cases.
To illustrate the point, consider that the vice president of a company (on the basis of her instinct) think that the employees of the firm can perform and contribute better in a flat structure of the company. As a result, she takes a decision to change the organizational structure of the firm to make it flat with no or very few hierarchies. Her instinct makes her realize that the workers, when working in flat environment will lead to communicate much better and eventually will complete their assigned tasks with greater accuracy. Now say after making huge modifications in the roles and the responsibilities of the employees, the decision back fired and degrade the employees' performance because if their less respect to their managers and their casual approach to a problem or task. The vice president should take a lesson from this experience and hence should include this experience in taking further decisions.
To illustrate the above point, in complex issues of future, the vice president realizes that she will take the above mentioned experience into consideration and will not solely realize on her instinct. As she has already seen an example, there are relatively less chances of failure of a decision that is based on the above learned experience.
The decision need not to based only on the decision maker's own experience and learnings and therefore the experience should not be limited to one's own. They might include the lessons from the history that has already been proven. The great business decisions taken in the past can be analyzed and a studied to further remove the errors that the decision makers have already made and hence these errors can be removed or at least minimized.
To summarize, the experience have definitely an edge over instinct. Experience includes understanding of the past follies which help in eradicating such mistakes from the future course of actions and hence increases the possibility of the decision to be an effective one, eventually leading to great business decisions that would be taken based on the learnings from the past rather than the person's own instinct.
"In making a complex decision, one should trust experience more than instinct."
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the position stated above. Support your viewpoint using reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
MY RESPONSE:
The issue of relying on experience instead of instinct is controversial. On one hand, experience should be the judging factor before making easy solutions to the complex problems, On the other hand, instinct might prove to be useful sometimes but cannot be considered when situation is complex. In my opinion, experience should be given an edge over instinct in such cases.
To illustrate the point, consider that the vice president of a company (on the basis of her instinct) think that the employees of the firm can perform and contribute better in a flat structure of the company. As a result, she takes a decision to change the organizational structure of the firm to make it flat with no or very few hierarchies. Her instinct makes her realize that the workers, when working in flat environment will lead to communicate much better and eventually will complete their assigned tasks with greater accuracy. Now say after making huge modifications in the roles and the responsibilities of the employees, the decision back fired and degrade the employees' performance because if their less respect to their managers and their casual approach to a problem or task. The vice president should take a lesson from this experience and hence should include this experience in taking further decisions.
To illustrate the above point, in complex issues of future, the vice president realizes that she will take the above mentioned experience into consideration and will not solely realize on her instinct. As she has already seen an example, there are relatively less chances of failure of a decision that is based on the above learned experience.
The decision need not to based only on the decision maker's own experience and learnings and therefore the experience should not be limited to one's own. They might include the lessons from the history that has already been proven. The great business decisions taken in the past can be analyzed and a studied to further remove the errors that the decision makers have already made and hence these errors can be removed or at least minimized.
To summarize, the experience have definitely an edge over instinct. Experience includes understanding of the past follies which help in eradicating such mistakes from the future course of actions and hence increases the possibility of the decision to be an effective one, eventually leading to great business decisions that would be taken based on the learnings from the past rather than the person's own instinct.
