Most of us believe the more time you spend and the more information you gather, you would be better off with the decision. A person, a company or even a government collects the most possible amount of information for the most cases and take example from it for future reference. They believe this helps to build contingency planning and ‘we’ seem to agree with this vague idea. Nevertheless as you gather more information webs amongst your ideas expands endlessly and decisions become difficult to make. Eventually a lot of information would cause chaos.
Obvious problem happens in an emergency. Slow analysis and deep thinking will cause a trouble tragedy. In this emergency occasion the first thought passing through your head might be the better answer. ‘Blink’ is about this snap judgement that is enormously quick and the book is proving decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately. This book also convinces you that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled therefore the first impression is not a gift given magically to a fortunate few.
Gladwell calls the snap judgements and the power of knowing in the first two seconds a ‘blink. ‘ Main content of the book Thin-slicing – To experience ‘blink’ we must learn how to thin-slicing webs of information we have in our head. Thin slicing is our unconsciousness’ ability that finding ways to solving problems or anticipating patterns of incidents from a thin piece of experience. Preconception – What if preconception interrupts our snap judgement? Most of preconception depends on our unconsciousness hidden behind our cortex in the brain.
Easy example is appearance. Preconception built between the black and the white, unconscious expectation from a good-looking person lead the snap judgement to the way that is not suppose to. In ‘Blink’ Galdwell takes example of Warren Gamaliel Harding who is elected as 29th president of United States for ‘the most president like look’ but remembered as the worst president in the history of the America. Gladwell suggests we should take active steps in order to reduce the error might occur due to the preconception of our unconsciousness.
Gaining information – Although by thin-slicing you received right first impression the strong feeling from it might be blurred by questions asking specific points for it. Precisely, impression of ‘delicious’ after you tasted a jam would be distanced as you go through specific points such as level of sugar inserted, quality and smell of the product etc. Innovated and differentiated products or ideas can not exactly be marked or measured. In this case, the market, the producer or even consumers must take adventure on the feelings they received in the first moment.
Dealing with information – The author also suggests it is essential to train the process of obtaining snap judgement and learn dedicated information in order to extract them and cope with the emergency situation. Our mind faced with a life-threatening situation, drastically limits the range and amount of information that we have to deal with. Therefore, this means that we need experiment on making decisions and the experiment could me obtained by screening the happening around specific environment and what you are doing in the specific moment.
The experience will be remained in the area of unconsciousness and will act as strong evidence that will eventually enable us to make perfect snap judgement. Boeing – Group Presentation Company The seemingly image of Boeing shows a perfect example of how multinational company should move quickly and spontaneously in order to adapt to the ever-changing environment of the business market. When ‘9. 11’ happened in 2001, they reduced number of planes travelling to the United States into half and even cut the number of seats they have in each planes.
It is because they anticipated the results in which people will not wish to travel by planes for some time after the terror. This quick movement is an excellent example of ‘Blink’ because their management team had this ‘first impression’ on ‘9. 11’ and behaved in their best ways to keep their maximum profits. Critical Evaluation Throughout this book the idea is kept as one and the author keep brought evidences in order to support the idea. The pure idea was ‘Blink’ as the title suggests and Gladwell proves how his ideas could be explained. However the book seems to repeat what it has said.
I felt the author continued writing book compulsorily in order to assemble complicated puzzle in his head. Most of evidences he mentioned were not new ideas or something that is enormously meaningful. For example the evidence he used about preconception between the black and the white is not completely about ‘Blink’ in my personal thoughts. I agree with his ideas of preconception on appearance but not on colour of race. Also, he uses evidences of a psychologist who can guess whether couple would be together after years only by listening to their conversation for few minutes.
Of course the results shows a great evidence for what Gladwell is attempting to tell us however he was not able to prove this scientifically. We all know our ‘first impression’ is important and this could work positively or negatively in different environment but after we read ‘Blink’ we start thinking more seriously on such issue. The book mentions interesting ideas such as thin-slicing and I do agree on the idea when the author suggests we should train ourselves so we do not give anyone any preconception whereas I still believe he did not brought enough evidences that can clearly define ‘Blink’ in scientific definition.
Recommendation Gladwell brought up interesting ideas such as ‘first two seconds impression’ or ‘thin-slicing. ‘ The book explains importance of first impression and by inserting a lot of reality examples such as ‘Harding’ it is easy to read. In terms of business it is not entirely concentrated on such topic however I believe management team could recommend this book to their employee so that they learn how they could upgrade their first impression.
In addition the ideas in ‘Blink’ could be adapt to management decision-making processes and will help the company in such ways of Boeing. Although evidences Gladwell brought up is not entirely meaningful or understandable, if it is true and if the ideas could be explained more it would be one of the most creative book of the world. It is recommendable book because it gives you time to think about yourself and gives time to change negative impressions about yourself.
