The Benefit of Slow Thinking
The hierarchy of competence

The Benefit of Slow Thinking

The Benefit of Slow Thinking

I had a "conversation" with the text-davinci-003 artificial intelligence model this morning.

Me: Why is it difficult for an expert to explain something to a novice?

AI: The expert may use language that the novice doesn't understand or may forget to explain certain concepts that the novice needs to know in order to understand the explanation.

We develop expertise regarding the practice of our core business processes. That is, we're unconsciously competent. Our understanding is tacit.

Our computers only know what we tell them to do. We must make our understanding explicit to provide them with instructions.

In other words, we must slow our thinking to move from the realm of unconscious competence to that of conscious competence. Often, that's what we're doing when we create a process map.

"Fulfill a pizza order" becomes this:

BPMN map of a pizza order fulfillment process
A BPMN map of a pizza order fulfillment process

By slowing down, we make our expertise explicit in the form of a process blueprint. That makes it easier, faster, and cheaper for us to design effective automation.

According to John Boyd's Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop hypothesis, learning, adaptation, and performance are a function of one's relative cycle time. Creating a process blueprint (orienting) may delay decision-making but can accelerate and improve implementation (acting).

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