"Mighty" Mitchell Young -- Dean of University of Northern Virginia in Prague -- is hands-down one of my best friends in La Ville D'Or.

We been secretly engaging in a spirited book exchange over these past few months -- me handing him a title I've recently ploughed through, he, one of his -- and I'm spilling the beans for you today.

That's right, folks -- I'm not going to hide it anymore: me and Mitch are, um...idea-lovers.

The latest little treasure I've gotten my meathooks on, courtesy of Mighty Mitch, is Gary Klein's THE POWER OF INTUITION: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions At Work.

I'm just getting into the first 100 or so pages, but already I can tell it's precisely the kind of book I'll be recommending to my staff and several other younger Czechs I meet during my social networking forays and trips abroad where Czech people congregate in large numbers like migratory birds.

From what I can gather, the fundamentals of Klein's work are like so:

** charts, tables, flowcharts, Excel spreadsheets, and other more reductive decision-making techniques-- while handy -- are no by no means a substitute for "gut feel." They supplement, not replace.
** intuitive -- or "gut" -- decision-making ability isn't a bunch of hooeyed mumbo-jumbo that depends exclusively upon feelgood, the occult, G.od, or new-age spiritual rubbish that has zero foundation in hardcore numbers. It's as real as that plate of dumplings and svickova in front of you, Honza.
** intuitive decision-making can (and should) be taught at home, in school, and in the workplace. Like any other teachable skill, one can train themselves to be more "feeling" decision-makers.

Klein's book even lays out a selection of handy exercises which will force managers, in addition to their direct reports, to analyze the fundamentals of their decision-making processes. It will force them to think about ways in which their jobs can be broken down into manageable tasks removed from cold analytical decision-making, and teach them how to make split-second decisions from factors more internal.

You know, all of this is rather key for the Czech new corporate set.

I don't know if you find similarly, friends, but far too often decisions in the Czech marketplace are dependent upon reams of data. Like the ever-present scowl on these same Prague streets, Czech middle management often takes a dispassionate view towards decision-making, by falling back solely upon charts, tables, and bean-counting in order to justify a given decision.

All this dovetails with something I find myself doing of late with my staff: I do plenty of one-on-ones.

To all you managers out there (and those of you with the chutzpah to call yourselves our "elected leaders"), I find there's no better substitute for driving to the soul of what makes my people tick than by asking them about what interests them.

I'm curious how their days are going, whether I'm paying them enough, or whether they're satisfied with the projects they're engaged in for my company.

Generally, their responses are laden with the sort of pithy asskissing they think I want to hear.

And it's hardly their fault: this is a central tenet of their bargain-basement business school educations they received; trained, as they've been, to tow a specific line. Like trained attack dogs at that kennel I recently visited near Beroun, Czech "up and comers" are often harshly rebuked for thinking innovatively. Like those dogs, if they dare to get out of line they're promptly "whacked" back into position. Do it often enough, and the dogs will learn how it's not correct for them to think independently, as they cower away to lick their wounds.

Like I tell my clients, I don't care what you think -- you're not going to surmount millennia of biology. Treat your employees as human beings, not golems. Don't do so at your peril.

So how do we fix this? (Since I'm from Canada, I don't like to aimlessly complain (like sport), unlike my Czech opposite numbers).

The main cancer, in my estimation, is that books -- such as Klein's -- aren't translated into the Czechoslovak Ethnic Language and, therefore, proponents, like the former, of intuitive decision making aren't successful in reaching a wider constituency.

Those with their fat, greasy hands on the levers of power in this so-called republic, the former nomenklatura and other assorted bootlickers promoted to positions of privilege during the Former Regime, have been too heavily dependent on charts, graphs, and computerized subroutines to actually give intuitive decision-making a fair shot.

Young Czechs are hardly going to learn how to think in this manner from these deflowered (and still secret) members of the Red Brigades and other May Day "winners."

The present solution is for staid tertiary institutions like Prague's VSE to have 99.9% Western oversight until further notice. This, until we see more of a sympathetic, XX chromosomal (aka "female"), emotional decision-making style employed at wholly Czech firms.

While we're at it, I'd like to see less of the hard-drinking, adulterating, excuse-seeking set running the educational show, I'd like to have fewer women running to fetch me coffee and biscuits when I show up to interview subjects for my podcast show, and less of that false fawning "pan/i reditel/ka" bullshit that passes for corporate discipline at the purely Czech firms I visit (read: not companies like Vodafone, CR, which are complete novelties).

Books like Klein's should be brought into the Czech mainstream, translated into the Czechoslovak Ethnic Language, and made more accessible to the sundry rural and other provincial ethnic Bohemians, Moravians, Silesians, Czech-Poles, Czech-Slovaks, and Roma who come to Prague like kids at "Christmas morning" to attend the boxy schools with names like "Vysoka Skola Ekonomicka."


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As I continue on with my read, I'll have more feedback for you, dear ctenari.

Until then, I remain the one you love to hate,
Adoringly,
Your non-Czech Czech,
ADM