"the art of focusing on what’s important and ignoring the rest"

Quando comecei a ler/ouvir "Gut feelings: the intelligence of the unconscious" de Gerd Gigerenzer, apesar do autor estar constantemente a repetir que "Less is More", nunca pensei na relação directa entre o trabalho do autor e as reflexões que faço sobre o meu trabalho de intervenção nas empresas.
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Contudo, comecei a juntar as peças quando ouvi:
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"Common sense suggests that forgetting stands in the way of good judgment. Earlier in this book, however, we met the Russian mnemonist Shereshevsky, whose memory was so perfect that it was flooded with details, making it difficult for him to get the gist of a story."
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E relacionei com os casos que Gigerenzer conta, uma e outra vez, em como os ignorantes, em n testes, conseguem bater os especialistas, em previsões desportivas ou concursos sobre geografia.
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Estou sempre a chamar a atenção para:

• Concentrar uma empresa no que é essencial;
• Responder à pergunta quem são os clientes-alvo e trabalhar paranoicamente para os servir;
• Ao modelar o funcionamento de empresas, não sejam como os franceses, não tentem incluir, não tentem contemplar tudo;
• Ao cartografar um processo, começar pela sua finalidade, pela sua razão de ser, pelo seu propósito;

Quando se sabe muito sobre um tema, podemos ser prejudicados pelo excesso de conhecimento quando a resposta não é lógica:

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"Imagine you are a contestant in a TV game show. You have outwitted all other competitors and eagerly await the $1 million question. Here it comes: 

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Which city has the larger population, Detroit or Milwaukee?

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Ouch, you have never been good in geography. The clock is ticking away. Except for the odd Trivial Pursuit addict, few people know the answer for sure. There is no way to logically deduce the correct answer; you have to use what you know and make your best guess.

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Daniel Goldstein and I asked a class of American college students, and they were divided—some 40 percent voted for Milwaukee, the others for Detroit. Next we tested an equivalent class of German students. Virtually everyone gave the right answer: Detroit. One might conclude that the Germans were smarter, or at least knew more about American geography. Yet the opposite was the case. They knew very little about Detroit, and many of them had not even heard of Milwaukee. These Germans had to rely on their intuition rather than on good reasons. What is the secret of this striking intuition? The answer is surprisingly simple. The Germans used a rule of thumb known as the recognition heuristic:

• If you recognize the name of one city but not that of the other, then infer that the recognized city has the larger population.

The American students could not use this rule of thumb because they had heard of both cities. They knew too much. Myriad facts muddled their judgment and prevented them from finding the right answer. A beneficial degree of ignorance can be valuable, although relying on name recognition is of course not foolproof."

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O nono capítulo "Less is More in Healthcare", um capítulo que mete medo, ao dissecar o pensamento dos médicos que os leva à sobre-prescrição, à sobre-medicação, e ao sobre-tratamento, termina assim:

• "Truly efficient health care requires mastering the art of focusing on what’s important and ignoring the rest. "

BANG! Aquelas palavras "the art of focusing on what’s important and ignoring the rest"

• "Good intuitions must go beyond the information given, and therefore, beyond logic."

Outro BANG!!! Uma estratégia, ou muitas estratégias bem sucedidas resultam porque não têm uma lógica linear... porque são fundamentadas em... "optimismo não documentado", em intuição.