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Dr. Shiv's discussion on the role of emotion during the decision making process, and to some measure the Wharton text's chapter on Protective Decisions, highlights that although there are objective variables in a decision and that objective reality may not be affected by the emotional tone of a moment, the fact remains that psychological factors such as confidence and one's attitude can impact overall performance and decision making ability.

There were two situations in recent memory where I experienced decision making and performance impacts from varying confidence levels and attitudes. A situation where I had high confidence and relatively high expectations for a positive outcome was when I volunteered to teach one of our monthly leadership seminars for the junior officers and senior enlisted. The topic that was requested was Team Building, and I just so happened to be taking my MSLD course for Developing Teamwork. A few days before the presentation, I created a slide deck and integrated much of my reading materials to cover the highlights, and even was able to provide inputs from a text on introversion (Quiet, by Susan Cain) as a foil to show times when individual work may be desirable. I also had a highly positive attitude about the task, as it was outside of the usual grind of the office and I hadn't had an opportunity to do a brief on a subject I was comfortable with since I had graduated college. To tie in with the Wharton text, I had positive past experiences and didn't feel a high need to exercise any "protection," per se, almost like the example of the individual who wasn't concerned about crime and didn't purchase a deadbolt (Hoch et al, 2001). The end result was a well received briefing, with one of my supervisors commenting that I did in fact exhibit a high level of confidence she didn't usually see, mentioning I might be a good fit for instructor duty at some point.  In this circumstance, I was able to select my materials and give the presentation with a strong sense of certainty, because it was subject matter I felt I was able to internalize and understand. Additionally, I generally felt good about sharing what I felt was useful information, and having completed everything I did, I felt a sense of accomplishment.

Not long before that was a situation where although I wanted to succeed, I had low confidence and wanted to get it done and over with. I was interested in making a move away from my desk job and picking up a flying job with the Air Force, which required me to not only get accepted for the training pipeline but also base what's called Initial Flight Screening, where we fly small civilian airplanes. Although billed as a zero hour training course, there's still a strong element of testing one's intrinsic ability to learn quickly and on the Air Force's timetable. Try as I might, not only was I having a rough time with academics, but I was having trouble landing the plane on my own...a common issue of which there's only so much one can do, and something I had challenge doing without being talked through it. My confidence quickly dwindled, further compounded by ongoing issues with airsickness that never afflicted me before. When I got to my last chances, I continued a trend towards being highly risk averse and didn't execute the "slip" maneuvers that I learned a little too late was something that was part of normal business. Generally speaking, I wasn't willing to take a level of acceptable risk, and I also feel I perhaps could have made some different decisions on how much down time or recovery I needed after a day's flying versus forcing further study upon myself, perhaps influenced by the additional stress. Overall, the low confidence let to a high level of anxiety more than anything else, as well as a nominal amount of anger and frustration to see things through to the end, and eventually a sense of resignation that despite all efforts I was unable to meet the prescribed training timetable. In a mirror of Dr. Shiv's ideas on confidence relating to performance, I had lower confidence, and likely lost some investment or motivation in the effort (Shiv, 2011).

In both cases, the correlation between confidence and performance as highlighted by Dr. Shiv played out according to his assessment. Higher confidence leads to higher level of motivation and engagement, which can also translate to gains in efforts, and thus can lead to higher quality decisions or greater chances of success.

Resources

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H. C., & Gunther, R. E. (2001). Wharton on Making Decisions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Shiv, B. (Narrator). (2011). Brain Research at Stanford: Decision Mak [Online video]. Retrieved March 16, 2014

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David Snowden's Cynefin Framework brings to bear a different, almost paradoxical, point of view in how a leader can work through the process of analyzing information and executing upon a decision. Although it provides a framework in highlighting different the different contexts of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic, there is an additional variability accounted for by having a context of "disorder" in the center of the chart that recognizes how a situation can change or deal with multiple contexts, thus changing considerations like whether analysis or action processes need to be executed first in a situation.

Although I can't point to one specific instance, most any time I had to deal with troubleshooting at the office has been a multiple-context decision making process. Like many things in the military environment, there is generally some widely accepted or explicitly published immediate action that is taken. In the IT realm for instance, there is actually a measure of truth to closing and opening a program or checking connectivity, something of a simple decision context. But, some issues may not be resolved, and I may find myself needing to find a technician with further expertise to help solve the problem, shifting the decision making over to the complicated arena. Things can get more interesting if the initially simple issue turns out to be something more widespread or was simply an early indicator of a catastrophic issue with greater impact, necessitating a larger and more rapid response from the tech support end under a chaotic context. That in turn could evolve into a decision where more probing and analysis is needed to develop a fix action, thus making us work in a complex context. Overall, any troubleshooting action can potentially go from routine, to chaotic or complex, back to routine within the course of the same job.

I very recently wrapped up another multiple context situation with what seemed like a relatively simple decoration project. I initially started with a simple framework...my boss' boss said go and get some nice foam board pictures hung up in the hallway, I'll get you some points of contact. In the midst of this, I'm also still sharing some level of authority with another friend at the office, both of us doing this task alongside our usual duties. Time passes, and before long we're asking where the project is. We are briefly in a chaotic stage as we scramble to pick up the project again, and gradually I gain full authority over the project. After further friction though, I start working directly with our in house public affairs section, and start working out how we can get the pictures made and hung up within the budget we have. From leadership perspective, it looked like it would be a complicated context that would require only leveraging our resources and expertise. Upon further consultation though, there were lots of rules and regulations that created difficulties for production, as well as equipment issues, ultimately leading us towards a complex context and having to contact another base and see if we could arrange for buying the materials from their bigger print shop. Further disorder was injected, however, when our higher headquarters said we could utilize their printing resources, and we were then shifting between straight disorder and a complex context as we sought out different courses of actions and their respective pros and cons. Finally, among all these context changes, my local point of contact found these very nice frames that were laying around from an abandoned project, with which we could utilize our own photo printing resources and forget about the foam board. I agreed we should present the option, and the Commander really liked the look. We were able to shift back to a complicated context of coordinating with the necessary experts to print the pictures, mount them in the frames, and get them hung up on the wall.

The biggest consideration in dealing with these context situations, for me personally, was identifying where I could handle the issue myself and where I needed to seek outside assistance or expertise. From there, it was a matter of taking in the information I could get and executing an appropriate course of action or determining I needed further information or assistance. Admittedly though, my considerations generally haven't gotten more complicated than that, and I could well stand to do further analysis now better understanding what to look for from the Cynefin point of view.

As for five ways in which the framework can be helpful in improving decision making, first off, it gives some general guidelines for the "flavor" of a situation and can help one perceive how they should be looking at a given situation...whether its a routine issue or one that needs heavy thought. Second, the framework can help a leader identify what their role in a situation should be, whether to facilitate the gathering and synthesizing of information or make a command decision to restore stability. Third, the framework can highlight danger signals to look for to indicate when a leader should attempt to shift the context so the decision making process isn't pinned to one state. This leads to a fourth improvement, which is how to respond to a set of danger signals to restore a balanced footing, be it seeking information or pushing for different approaches to problems. Finally, having a grasp of the overall Cynefin Framework model can help a leader appreciate the potential scope for dynamic changes, hopefully posturing them towards readiness in reacting to, if not anticipating, changes in the context they're working in (Snowden and Boone, 2007)

References
Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007, November). A Leader's Framework for Decision Making. Harvard Business Review

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Most leadership texts and curriculum specifically prescribe in their methodologies, or at the very least infer, the idea that collaboration with any and all stakeholders in an issue is of great importance. Besides the benefits of having a certain number of additional viewpoints from which to gain ideas and perspective, collaboration with other parties can highlight any second order effects a proposed action may have. This would especially be true in a larger organization, especially one that has multiple tiers of leaders and followers where the lower tiers are likely to be tasked with execution or must adjust to any changes from the higher tiers.

Within the context of Stewart Levine's Cycle of Resolution, collaboration also seems to constitute much of the model's foundation. Several of the steps within the cycle have names that suggest an inherent requirement for collaboration, including words such as "listening" in two steps, and "agreement" in an additional two steps. That means at least four of seven steps within the cycle have an explicit intent of working with other interested parties in reaching ultimate resolution. In doing this, there is greater likelihood of not only arriving at an optimum course of action for the greater organization and the interconnected parties, but also a minimized risk of consequences that may go unseen within the scope of a single perspective.

At one time I was involved with a project to relocate a piece of massive equipment from where it was in storage to our own campus. It was presented to me as a simple, broad, mission type order to "get it here." Little did I know the numerous intricacies involved. It wasn't simply a matter of throwing the equipment on a truck and bringing it over, but it ended up involving many players and countless considerations. I started very simply with only asking around the plans shop I was working with at the time and asking them who to talk to. This expanded over time to involve higher level logistics planners, operational oversight and planning, manning, and eventually infrastructure and facilities. Before long, I even had to work around environmental issues as we aren't allowed to drop anything into just any empty plot of grass. We also had to work around considerations for further development of our campus. Overall though, I admittedly had no process I was working with other than following leads from question to question, and I hadn't developed much of an outcome I was seeking beyond getting the equipment on site and making the boss happy. In the end, even after having to hand the project off when I went on an extended business trip, we're still nudging the thing along over a year later.

There are certainly some ways stakeholder involvement could have made this process less painful. First off, a more exhaustive outreach to potential stakeholders may have cut some time out of the piecemeal discovery of considerations at the initial onset, and may have been conducive to more rapidly bringing together the parties necessary to decide upon resolution. Second, to borrow from Levine's text Getting Resolution, having these parties together would have afforded the opportunity for the different stakeholders to tell their stories and provide greater clarity on the sub-objectives that would directly contribute to the primary objective. Third, to continue from sharing our perspectives a gathering of shareholders could continue following Levine's resolution model and get current and complete information. In having heard different perspectives, the shareholders could highlight what worked or did not work for similar moves in the past and compile a more complete list of issues and questions that need to be worked out. Fourth, having gone through these processes there is greater likelihood of coming to some kind of an agreement on a way ahead and thus there is the opportunity for each stakeholder to have taken on a more active role in the move and help expedite the process. Finally, in having had that initial involvement, I would think we would be much closer to Levine's definition of resolution than we are now and be executing the move in some fashion, vice the current state which still involves much ongoing debate on the questions of how, whom, and what will be used to make the move finally happen (Levine, 2009).

Of course, we still haven't achieved the end objective due to the red tape involved, but there are lessons learned in this experience. First off, it was a hard lesson learned in expeditiously ascertaining who all the stakeholders or parties of interest would be, make contact, and get coordinated to prevent a long drawn out process of discovery and sputtering coordination. Second, if those parties did come together, we would need be upfront fairly quickly on our needs and concerns so as, again, not to waste a great deal of time dealing with them in a piecemeal fashion. Finally, we seem to continue learning the hard way that seeking resolution without an agreement per Levine's models is a recipe for a long, drawn out execution phase. Rather than having actions fall into place as agreed upon in a collaboratively produced framework, the project seems to be stuck in a day by day re-evaluation of how things are going now based upon the actions of the current stakeholders (or lack thereof) and how it impacts the other stakeholders based on regulation or any politics involved.

To summarize in brief, the situation had proved that half-hearted collaboration at the outset in combination with a loosely defined agreement has, as of now, yielded no firm results and a great deal of frustration.

References

Levine, S. (2009). Getting Resolution. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

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As discussed in Stewart Levine's text Getting Resolution, there are occasions where a conflict and the costs of attempts at resolution or the conflict itself were much higher than would be preferred by the parties involved. One such conflict occurred, I think, in my work place in the form of a disagreement between another work center and my own with regards to who would manage certain records of configuration management. The issue came to light because it came to leadership's attention that we didn't have the highest level of accuracy in our records of how and where certain computers were configured versus what was actually set up. Where the conflict really flared up though was in who would ultimately be responsible for such a thing, as setting up a computer involves both my work center, the one in charge of client systems, and my colleague's work center that's in charge of our local network.

Both sides of the argument were incredibly insistent on their respective point of views, with my personnel thinking responsibilities needed to be divided along specialties so we wouldn't be accountable for something outside of our control, and the other work center wanting to reallocate tasks to, in their view, optimize the task flow. I was more interested in having a central point of contact, likely based with the networking work center, but my colleague and his subordinates would have nothing of it as he thought the extra back and forth communication was "too complicated". After much debating though, the senior enlisted from both work centers worked out a kind of hand off which would happen in the records keeping, effectively dividing the responsibility. 

Lo and behold though, not even a couple months later we're still having issues with accurate records. Another meeting is called, with additional man hours being used to think of solutions and counter arguments, and several people are thrown into the conference room. As I was agreeable towards, but frustrated with the turn around nonetheless, my colleague suggested we go with a central point of contact to manage the records. At that moment, I spoke up and noted that we were right back where we were before and heading right towards what his work center had advocated against. We'd gone through another less than ideal process and more meetings, we ended up going back to a solution that was initially pushed off the table for not fitting in with the viewpoint of the moment. We did eventually figure out a solution involving a central point of contact, but it did indeed take some time to arrive at that conclusion.

Considering Levine's 10 Principles of New Thinking, we probably could have benefited a great deal in adopting several of these concepts, if not all. For instance, much of the debate was centered around the workload for our limited resource of manpower...rather than thinking of our manning as a scare resource (scarcity), we may have better been served in believing we had a great deal of talent that could accomplish a great deal, and we could continue to get things done and meet our goals of productivity (abundance). In a related note, we tended to discuss more of the negatives...we could only see the issue in the lens of how not to waste the resource of time, the issue itself, and we also tended to see only the conflict between our work centers. Rather, we could have focused on creative solutions, fostering collaboration, and creating an effective partnership (Levine, 2009).

I think that at the very least, holding the meetings with a collaborative or positive frame in mind would have at least led to more productive dialog, and might have even led us to create a better process in the first place rather than having to use time and resources ineffectively and necessitating yet another meeting. We probably also would have saved the additional stress on our personnel, the scrutiny from higher leadership, and likely would have yielded a much lower level of lingering feelings of strife and lack of desire to work with the other work center. In general, acting in greater accordance with the Principles of New Thinking would've been of benefit for the objective we had, and would have better promoted unit cohesion than the traditional bout over the conference table. The trick, of course, would have been to get everyone on the same page.

Having gone through this thought exercise, I'm of the opinion that as idealistic it may seem, the 10 Principles are not impossible notions and indeed, many of them are principles in which can be readily applied to most any conflict situation or collaborative effort. The challenge comes in changing the perspectives of the parties involved to, as Levine alludes to earlier in the text, get the parties involved telling their side and really talking about the issue, and then getting them to view a conflict situation outside of the traditional paradigm of a win/lose problem to be solved logically and instead viewed in the context of creative, collaborative problem solving that is still a relatively new idea in many circles. It presents an interesting paradox of a relatively simple idea that requires conscious effort to realize to its full potential.

Works Cited

Levine, S. (2009). Getting Resolution. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

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I have to admit from the outset that although the idea of protected values in itself makes sense to me, I'm at somewhat of a loss as to my own protected values within the context of an academic or business setting. Having said that, I did run with the mind mapping exercise and put down some values to include free markets, consumer choice, and allowing businesses and organizations to operate how they will within a legal framework.

As Dan Gilbert alluded to in the first video we viewed for the class, humans can do some irrational things based simply on their perception or the context of losses or gains involved in pursuing certain courses of actions, or in dealing with areas of "sunk cost." We may recall from the examples Gilbert used, people may drive a little further to save some money, or they may have different considerations on whether a night is ruined depending on whether they lost a ticket or lost $20.

I can say that although I might not radically change my courses of action based on my protected views, I certainly can have irrational gripes and occasionally irrational actions based upon how I reconcile my values and the situation at hand. For instance, I put down a belief in democratic government, reinforced by beliefs in people having a choice, having a central authority, and having substantive debate. I do participate in the voting process and support the government, although as a private citizen, I do get frustrated at times by government processes. All the same though, I still play by the rules, I continue to support the system, and I haven't stopped participating or done anything to make radical change. As inefficient as government decision making can be, it still works for me in its own sense, and I undertake what is arguably the irrational option of accepting the system as it is. I also can have misgivings about what does and does not get regulated, but again, rather than do anything for major change, I work with things as they are because of the same arguably irrational choice to take it as it is. The view is in an odd sense, protected in that way, with my belief in the system continuing to reinforce my support towards it. I would assess this belief as highly protected.

I also had a view toward free market capitalism that revolved around competition, freedom in business practices, and consumer choice. Again, I will support this system by being an active participant in it, continuing to eat out once in awhile, by myself a game or gadget, or getting reasonably nice clothes. I also support having choices in what I buy and where. In the midst of all this, I recognize that having a dozen different places with different selections and pricing on some merchandise can create additional stress, and my buying practices can be all over the map. I'm conscious of the imperfections in how companies can sometimes do business and how we do have some issues with high consumerism, but I still consider the system to be workable. I want to be able to choose to buy boots and knives made in my hometown or a car assembled in Europe, but I also want the choice to be able to say I don't particularly care where my trashcan or paper tray was assembled, I just want one that works and doesn't cost a lot. Thinking back, this was part of what influenced my decision making on leaving the dorm system after I transferred colleges...although I indulge occasionally in fancier food stuffs, I didn't want the university to tell me to buy a university meal plan just for the fact I live on campus, which in turn meant I'd either lose money or I would have to spend more for their contracted fair trade, organic, locally sourced food compared to a similar amount of "conventional food" at the local grocery or off campus restaurant. I didn't like having my value of consumer choice infringed upon (among other things), so I made the choice to turn to the free market on housing and make my own arrangements.

Finally, I had an area on my map where I said one shouldn't live to work, that is, work shouldn't be the one and only focal point of a person's life. Indeed, a lot of life can happen outside the office, time flies, and money can only contribute so much to a person's happiness. In holding to this value, while I do what's expected of me at the office and make sure people are taken care of, I'm not of the same mind as some other peers as to use my free time to get multiple additional certifications above and beyond what's required for my duties (which is to say, none at the moment besides basic technical training). I also do make it a point to make time for events and functions outside of work. Having said that, there are still points where the value gets sacrificed, and it happens with some regularity. There are days where I need to wake up early, so I have to turn down some invitations or I need to get to bed earlier. There's also an unspoken rule that one needs to obtain an advanced degree, so that leads me to taking my courses that consume a fair amount of the remaining three to four hours of my day. This value, in short, is one that's valued and is certainly the ideal, but in the execution of real life it is often sacrificed out of necessity. At the same time, it is this philosophy that may say even though it may save money to not take a weekend trip to Monterey or fly back home to Oregon, there are gains to be made in well being by getting away from the grind. One could say its a value that's protected when able.

To conclude, we all have things we believe in, and there's a lot of times where we stand by them whether we have to press on through the imperfections of those beliefs or we can't live them as often as we'd like. The key point though, is knowing those beliefs are there and that they can exert influence upon our decision making processes.

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As wonderful an ideal as it is for people to strive for open communication, honesty, and collaboration, there inevitably will come times where varying degrees of deception are introduced into a negotiation process or even most any other interaction between two individuals or parties. Why a person may engage in a deceptive action may vary, but however it may come about, its worthwhile to be cognizant of when deception may be happening and what the consequences may be for the person being deceived, the deceiver, the issue in question, and so on.

Much of working around or protecting against deception involves evaluating the information being received, and the class' Wharton text on decision making outlines how to go about this in different stages of negotiation, among the most pertinent stages being within the actual negotiation. Four notable techniques includes asking direct questions, listening carefully, noting nonverbal cues, and keeping written records.

According to the text, a study indicated "...subjects were significantly less likely to lie when asked a direct question," citing a statistic of 61% revealing the problem, 39% lying by commission, and none lying by omission. But, when not asked a direct question, none revealed the problem, 25% lied by commission, and 75% lied by omission (Hoch et al, 2001). In short, by not asking a question directly related to a potential problem an opportunity is given to the seller to simply let something go without being addressed "because no one ever asked." Particularly in a sales position, the selling party is highly unlikely to address their shortcomings or outright failures, giving further cause for one to follow the old adage of "buyer beware," especially in situations where there may not be the protections of a written contract or other service commitment.

Second, one should listen carefully to the other party. Its important first off that the representative is someone who is actually a subject matter expert and has a greater depth of knowledge, or that the person actually wields a nominal level of authority within their organization. From there, its important to listen to the answers of any questions, not just to infer the veracity of what is said but also consider what hasn't been said (Hoch et al, 2001). Did they cover all the relevant specifications of a component, or did they not mention a limiting factor that would be of high interest to you?

Tied into that, it is known within the realm of communication studies that an individual can convey additional information of what they are thinking via nonverbal cues, which is generally more difficult to mask or manipulate than verbal information. These cues can include actions such as increased blinking, fewer gestures, hesitation in speech or increased fillers, and other actions that generally lend an appearance of there being something else on a person's mind (Hoch et al, 2001).

Finally, it is advisable for one to write down any particularly important details and claims or commitments, as well as to conduct any records checks or insist on guarantees for particularly important issues (Hoch et al, 2001). As the text illustrated in its example, if something isn't put into writing where there is no room for plausible deniability, or there isn't any legal "teeth," that presents an opportunity for one or both parties to move forth as they see fit and potentially get by with a general attitude of "nobody lied, the truth changed."

Speaking from experience, there have been some occasions where I've received information that wasn't up to the highest degree of accuracy, and in my line of work there's almost a necessity for "expectations management." I remember I was working with a friend in one of our client units, and she had asked me to check back with our planning function on a line of paperwork she needed to have processed. I did this, and the planning shop said she still needed to give them some data points in order to proceed forth. Going back to my friend, she said the planning function needed to be working yet another line of documentation before she could move forth on getting the data. At the end of the day, I was left with no forward progress after playing go between, with both sides absolutely adamant that they were doing their job and the other side wasn't. I, unfortunately, didn't have background on the problem nor did I know what the process should have looked like, so I was not able to effectively determine if I was getting all the information, nor could I ask particularly specific questions or verify the information I was being given.

As for when I've overstated a claim, I've had plenty of occasions where a client would want a specific time frame for when a fix action would be completed. Something I was very quickly mentored to do was never to use the word "will," but instead say "should." For example, we always say "we should be able to get this worked by the afternoon." This is a philosophy we've dubbed as expectations management, and frankly speaking, our clients do it as well with their partner organizations to a certain measure. Generally we've gotten pretty good at sticking to our estimates on time or what needs fixing, but when something falls through, we can still say with a straight face that we "thought" something "should" be doable within a set of parameters, but now we have to work with another set. Maintaining this, I hate to say, is somewhat critical as even under those circumstances I've had a member of client leadership outright accuse us of lying when in fact the situation had just evolved.

Regarding the question of how far I would want to go to leverage a position, I expect I wouldn't stray too far from the common practice of wanting to highlight strengths and positives whenever possible. However, given my line of work, I would also want to be prepared to note any issues that would impact what we have going on, and I would ideally want to be ready to propose possible mitigation strategies or highlight the need to look at the issue when feasible. I fully expect that I would never lie by commission, although admittedly there are occasions within the office where we consider it better to pass up or down the chain only information that's need to know, and only disclose to the fullest extent when we have additional context or a way ahead. I suppose as long as I'm in the military, while there is a level of politics to contend with, I would hesitate to do much in the way of leveraging due to the common expectation of intrinsic trust that comes with the profession. If we ever got into the habit of having to stop and assess everything said by all of our members, or worse yet didn't trust anyone, I would imagine it would create a significant slowdown in the conduct of our business. A high level of trust, I believe, is one of the things that helps us do what we do everyday with any reasonable level of efficiency.

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Frames are something which can inherently influence how one views and processes the issues, factors, and overall world around us, and while frames arguably bring the benefit of simplifying issues into something we can readily comprehend, they also introduce the risk of a framing blindness where one fails to notice other potential viewpoints on an issue. This can, however, be mitigated with frame management techniques that allow one to proactively control them and even use for their own advantage. This includes techniques such as conducting a frame audit, identifying and changing any inadequate frames, and mastering techniques for reframing (Hoch et al., 2001).

A frame audit includes several sub steps, to include a personal frame audit, understanding the frames of others, and to take note of any emerging frames. A frame audit is likely one of the more time consuming parts of this technique, as the prescribed method involves creating a visualization of your own frame. This would, ideally, identify factors and points of interest at the core of your frame, as well as those that are important but not core, and any optional factors (Hoch et al., 2001). From there, the issue of understanding the frame of others and any emerging frames is a matter of actively listening and being open to different modes of thought. Understanding others can be better accomplished by asking what might matter to other parties, and what they might not be considering. Appreciating new frames can happen by embracing changes and working with new means of doing business. (Hoch et al., 2001) In my own experiences, I would say the frame audit process is something of a daily occurrence for my unit. When I first arrived, there was a strong tendency for our IT maintenance oriented unit and our client unit to clash frames. Our focus was on getting regular maintenance done and done right. Our client unit didn't want to stop working for any reason if they could help it. Eventually though, through a lot of conversation with each side vocalizing what their interests were, we were able to agree that we all wanted to be able to get the mission done. We also had to admit to ourselves that we didn't always have the best insight into what was on our client's radar, and that they likely weren't asking IT oriented questions when dealing with certain issues. The working relationship is now, thankfully, much more fruitful.

The identification and change of inadequate frames is more a series of questions that can be asked of oneself when they are doing a critical self examination of how they're looking at a situation. This can include the initial question of, are your frames effective? Are you asking the right questions, are they adaptable, are there any failures in your frames? (Hoch et al., 2001). It also involves cognizance of any symptoms of frame misfit, which can include anything ranging from surprise difficulties and poor results to having difficulties communicating. One also needs to be prepared to question the reference points they're working with in order to gauge what constitutes good or bad performance within your frame, and they need to work to understand any key assumptions about themselves or their organization that can influence their frame. (Hoch et al., 2001) This particular process is another ongoing matter for me, particular when new projects come up. Most recently, I've had to work several projects that involved procuring decorations for our front hallway, and kept being surprised by the number of regulations involved on what we could buy with certain funds, what could be bought with or without paperwork and so on.What became even more frustrating was explaining the project and any difficulties to people I had to work with (and with whom I wasn't necessarily expecting) to have to work on the project with, to include the supply shop in charge of storage spaces, the unit financial manager, the facilities manager for installation issues, so on and so forth. Its been a good hard way to learn about getting as much information as possible upfront to coordinate.

Finally, one needs to eventually work towards mastering techniques for reframing, a culmination of the previous two frame management techniques. This includes using multiple frames, where one can operate with multiple perspectives on the same problem be it from different levels of management and execution or from the perspective of different fields of expertise. It can also be beneficial for one to align their frame to that of others, that is, work together to capitalize on the strong points of each others frames. Having said that, one also needs to be open to asking questions of the reference points of others, prompting a stretch of a frame to include different aspects, or even building an entirely new frame for a situation. In short, one needs to only not understand their own frame and any deficiencies, but they need to be able to work with it and redefine it as necessary for a given situation (Hoch et al., 2001). Coming again to the workplace, we're encouraged to learn about our clients jobs and where it fits into the big picture of Air Force operations, not only so we have an answer as to whats important to them but so we can adjust the frames of our technicians to understand why an issue might be getting worked with a high level of urgency. We've also been able to work with our clients to understand where we fit into things, improving not only our working relationship but also leaning on each other to find better ways to get the job done, or help each other document our accomplishments for awards packages and performance reports.

Overall, the reading and the enclosed exercise make an excellent point that in a given situation, not only are there numerous variables to be considered, but there are different ways in which to view the variables that, in themselves, create further variables for how we look at an idea and how we discuss it with other stakeholders. Complex decision making, it seems, isn't simply a matter of making a choice but it also involves analyzing how you come to a decision and asking if there's anything that was missed either by imperfect processes or due to a frame related bias. I can say in the decision making and the projects I've dealt with, I would benefit from some of these frame management tools in more efficiently focusing efforts on an objective and collecting necessary information. Knowing some of these techniques and the inherent issue of frames in individuals may have saved me some time in the school of hard knocks, and perhaps some frustration in project execution. At this point in my career, I haven't been at a point where there was any great deal of risk involved in my recommendations, nor could I say I've had a high level of influence with any of my frames, but regardless, knowledge of frames and frame management is certainly useful to bear in mind.

Works Cited

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H. C., & Gunther, R. E. (2001). Wharton on Making Decisions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.