Sources of Power
by Gary Klein · first published 1999
78% recommend17% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Research-based look at how experts decide under stress and time pressure, introducing the recognition-primed decision model. Useful for anyone interested in intuition, expertise, and how skill develops.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…improvements because we're trying to hit a short term revenue goal of X") it helped him understand why he was working on a project, and which aspects of that project to spend time thinking about improving." Sources of Power by Gary Klein[1] is a great read about decision making and there's a whole chapter about communicating intent and motivation. "When you communicate intent, you are letting the other team members operate…
on “Three signs you have a management problem. And that problem might be you” ↗…do it." There are two other excellent "self-help" books that should be part of everyone's bookshelf. They are: * "Getting to Yes" which I think is the greatest book on negotiation. "How to deal" * "Sources of Power" by Gary Kline talks about how people make decisions. "How to decide" Give me these four books, and a firm place to stand, and I will move the world.
on “Stephen Covey, "7 Habits" author, dies at 79” ↗…groups like soldiers, ICU teams, police paramilitary units, firefighters and so forth tend to have similar social psychology dynamics. A good book to read on decision-making under extreme conditions is Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein.
on “How Meals Win Wars” ↗I can't recommend Gary Klein's Sources of Power enough, it is stuffed with awesome mental models, real life parables, research findings, and one quotable passage after another on expert decisionmaking. From the book, things experts do more/better/faster/etc…
on “Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?” ↗…would recommend the series first — AE assumes familiarity with the recognition primed decision making model (or RPD) which I cover in the series. If you want to read books to prepare yourself, read: - Sources of Power by Gary Klein - Power of Intuition by Gary Klein Before AE. And then be prepared to download LOTS of papers to read concurrently while reading the book. AE is not written for the layperson.
on “The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)” ↗Beyond Fear - Schneier Sources of Power - Klein. This guy did research on how experts made decisions under stressful situations. Normal Accidents - Perrow Emergence - Johnson
on “Ask HN: Books That Gratify One's Intellectual Curiosity?” ↗I second Sources of Power. A truly fantastic read. As a adjunct to learning about "Commander's Intent", the USMC's Warfighting provides a fairly simple background of theory.
on “Three signs you have a management problem. And that problem might be you” ↗Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions - Gary Klein http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make-Decisions/dp... Also, Gerd Gigerenzer is a good name to look into. My degree is in Decision Science, so I'm slightly…
on “Ask HN: What books to read on developing mental models and increasing cognition?” ↗- "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie - "The art of thinking clearly" by Ralf Dobelli - "Sources of power" by Gary Klein - "The 8 pillars of motivation" by Farnoosh Brock - "ReWork" by Jason Fried and David Hansson - "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug - "The art of explanation" by Lee LeFever - "Getting…
on “Ask HN: What were your "life-changing" books?” ↗…skill (there's a thing called "expert blind spot") so you also have hard time articulating what exactly you're doing. There is in fact quite a lot of research on the subject. Might want to start with "Sources of Power" by Gary Klein, and "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" (which I haven't read yet but gets cited a lot).
on “Ask HN: Trapped by knowledge” ↗"Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions" by Gary Klein. It talks about how experienced people can make higher quality decisions by taking into account their intuition vs just trying to decide using logic. https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make-Decisions/d...
on “How to Use Both Your Wits in a Startup” ↗1) Sources of Power: How people make decisions by Gary Klein Introduces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_primed_decision It really resonated with me. 2) Thinking and Deciding by Jonathan Baron. Quite thorough…
on “Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?” ↗Sources of Power by Gary Klein is an absolutely fascinating book for leaders, and covers this topic in depth: how experts use intuition and how they work to articulate and distribute that to others to build up similar…
on “Articulate and Incompetent” ↗…situation at that time, I recommend reading The Persian Puzzle by Pollack. https://www.amazon.com/Persian-Puzzle-Conflict-Between-Ameri... Additionally, to help explain how messed up the shoot-down was, Sources of Power by Klein. https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-20th-Anniversary-Decisi...
on “One of the greatest user interface disasters in history” ↗…be a component of this, but it's going to be a small component at most. I expect that realistic practice with fast feedback and expert mentorship matters far more. (If you're curious, I found the book Sources of Power by Gary Klein gave me a good way to think about how expertise works.) At the same time, memorization has a real cost: it takes time and it's frightfully dull. For me, at least, trying to memorize something…
on “Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?” ↗