Decision Making / 5 / 5.1 / 5.1.6

5.1.6 Making The Most Of Cognitive Capability

Despite cognitive shortcomings outlined earlier we still have impressive strengths, such as powers of pattern recognition, which we should exploit as far as we can. Strategic problem analysis involves careful consideration of delays and counter-intuitive behaviour. By studying changes that occur over time, periods of increase and decrease, phase relationships among variables, peaks and valleys, and so on, we can isolate dynamic patterns that might cause use problems in the management of risk. Once dominant patterns of behaviour are recognised and isolated, we can build models of them and through studying those models, based on knowledge gained through the case studies presented earlier, we can learn about risk strategy development. This approach has been borrowed from the systems thinking and system dynamics modelling disciplines. It has the important strengths that it fosters learning whilst allowing us to make the most of our cognitive capability. It relies on the repeated creation and testing of dynamic hypotheses (Sterman, 2000), that, is hypotheses about the causes underling the behaviour we observe over time. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.