What if? The key to making good decisions | Nidhi Kalra | TEDxManhattanBeach

when I was six my family had a tank of exotic fish and one day I looked at these fish and I thought oh they're so scaly they must have such dry skin I should help them and so I did I filled the tank with lotion I was in so much trouble that day if I had known how much trouble I would have left those poor fish alone that was the first time of so many times in my life that I wished I had a crystal ball a real crystal ball that I could look into and see the future so that I know what decision to make what to do now I'm an adult I'm a parent and I still struggle with decisions last year my daughter Freya was born and she gained weight so slowly she fell right off the growth charts I was terrified they called it failure to thrive she's two months old she's already failing at life it was horrible I laugh about it now but at the time I cried every day I took her to the cardiologist and the urologist and them all the other ologists and if I had just known that she'd grow up into a beautiful a perfectly healthy toddler all by herself I could have spared us the jabs the pokes the constant worry having a crystal ball means not having to live with uncertainty or regret now I know what you're thinking yeah crystal ball sounds awesome I hope Nittis handing them out later no unfortunately we have to live with uncertainty and not knowing what's next crystal balls just don't exist and so it can be really hard to make good decisions and it's even harder to make decisions with someone else when you don't agree on your assumptions or your beliefs or prediction of the future when my husband Dave and I lived in New York I started learning to play the piano on a digital piano that we'd received as a gift I loved it I played for hours every day and after a couple of months I said to Dave I really need a real piano to learn right I need an instrument with wood and strings and hammers in instead of buttons and headphones and plugs and Dave said but niti you just started playing pianos are big and expensive and we don't have the space and you know you have that tendency to start a hobby buy all the fancy gear and then drop it I mean look at your dusty rock climbing shoes your unopened paintbrushes you shouldn't buy a piano yet and of course I countered I said I'm committed this is different look at how dedicated I've been since we started I love that I want a piano and we tried so hard for the next several weeks to convince the other person that our prediction was right that we knew what was next and they did it but without that crystal ball we were stuck in a stalemate I remember so many nights one of us would end up sleeping in the living room which which is where the piano should have been I was frustrated and I shared the story with a friend of mine and she said you know Nitti but isn't this kind of your job isn't solving problems under uncertainty what you do for a living and I had this moment this like this thing I was like oh my god you're right and I went home and that night I said to Dave Dave we're looking at this problem all wrong we've been looking at it through a narrow lens of prediction but we can't predict the future we don't know who's right and what if we're both wrong anything's possible and so we agreed to Park to the side our very certain assumptions and to accept uncertainty then we started thinking we said okay let's look at this problem through a wide lens of possibility what are all the things that could happen what are all the things we could do and then we landed on a solution we bought a small cheap popular piano that has good resale value this lets me play on a real piano without breaking the bank or the living room and it's such a simple solution but we couldn't see it through that narrow lens of prediction because it's not the best thing to do if Dave's right and that exam I shouldn't be buying a piano at all and it's not the best thing to do if my prediction is right because then I should buy a really good one but buying a cheap piano works well regardless of who's right it's so obvious we just didn't see it at first now I hear the skeptics in the audience I hear you thinking ok nathie you found a compromise big deal but it's not a compromise see a compromise you've heard that saying a good compromise leaves everyone angry that's because a compromise is about giving up or giving in leaving so much of your position just so you can make a decision and move on and so often a compromise doesn't even work I mean what good would have a piano be that doesn't work for anybody so what is it that I do that help me solve piano gate as I like to call it now well I'm a decision scientist I work on finding solutions to problems that work for all sides for all predictions and beliefs solutions that work even when we don't have that crystal ball and we call these solutions robust and a robust solution leaves everyone satisfied what is a robust solution it's a solution that works even when we don't agree and even when we don't know what will be and it's a solution that comes from moving away from that narrow lens of prediction to the wide lens of possibility and I have good news for you you make robust decisions raise your hand if you drove drove here today and keep your hand raised keep your hand raised if you wore a seatbelt great that was a robust decision you couldn't predict if you were going to be in a crash driving here today but you buckled up anyway because that makes sense that works you make other robust decisions when you do common-sense things you try to send your kids to college because you believe that it opens up opportunities for them you save for retirement even though maybe you and your spouse don't agree on where you're going to retire or how much money you'll need you teach your kids to be thoughtful hard-working fair people because you want them to be resilient to everything that life might throw their way but this common sense it's intuition it's not enough when we're faced with high stakes problems where beliefs are polarized and the future is deeply uncertain my job is to help people make robust decisions intentionally and not just to solve personal problems but to solve global problems I believe robust decisions are the key to solving some of the most difficult problems we face that we struggle to make any progress on because we don't have that crystal ball I work on finding ways to deal with climate change robust ways to deal with our changing climate now let me tell you a little bit about climate change the Earth's climate has changed over its history but in planetary time that change is happening like that if you are going to go on a desert safari let's say next year to the Sahara you would prepare you would buy a map you'd get a guide you'd buy fancy gear which I approve off definitely get the fancy gear but now imagine that when you leave today you're suddenly teleported to the Sahara with just what's on your back your tank tops and your flip-flops you'd never survive and that's climate change change so fast that life on Earth struggles to adapt and for me climate change is the single most important problem we face in the world today because it threatens all life on Earth it threatens my child and your child and the child of every living thing and when I look up at the stars I remember that as far as we know we are the only life in the universe this pale blue dot the life on it is so rare so precious climate change threatens all of that so when my daughter grows up I don't want her asking mom how come you didn't do everything to deal with climate change when you still had the chance and believe me Freya is a curious kid she is going to grill me so I better have some good answers one of the reasons we're not dealing with climate change is actually really simple to explain we don't have that crystal ball our leaders tell us that until they can predict the future until we know what the future climate will be we can't make any progress on the problem and climate scientists aren't sure how fast the climate is changing or how much it's going to change and we don't all believe in the role of science anyway we seem stuck in a stalemate between deniers and alarmists but we don't have to be stuck now here in LA we're really worried about droughts it hardly rains here just six inches last year but now let's teleport to Lima Peru like la it's a city of 10 million people but unlike LA it hardly ever basically Neverland trains in lima last year 0.3 inches you don't carry an umbrella in LA well in Lima they don't even sell umbrellas and the people in Lima are wondering will there be enough water for our kids Alima gets its water from rivers that run from the Andes Mountains in the East to the Pacific Ocean in the West and Leamas planners wanted to make sure that they'd bring enough water in the future and so they did want water planners everywhere do they made a prediction of future water supply and demand based on past trends and then they made a plan based on those predictions and their plan had 14 huge water projects things like tunnels under the Andes to bring water from the east to the west new desalination plants and new water treatment plants and the price tag 2.7 billion dollars far more than any plan they'd ever tried before the problem is climate scientists aren't sure what the future water in the Andes is going to be to feed those rivers more rainfall less rainfall salary no crystal ball and to make matters worse Leamas planners weren't sure what their future was going to be and they didn't agree on their predictions or their assumptions so they couldn't actually tell if this plan was going to work and they can't afford to spend 2.7 billion dollars on a plan that won't work on a piano that they're not going to play as part of a team with the World Bank I was called in to help to change them to move them from that narrow lens of prediction to the wide lens of possibility instead of asking what's next we asked what if what climate change brings more rainfall what if it brings less rainfall what if it brings less rainfall but when it rains it pours we asked other questions lots of other questions like what if their projects are hard and they can't actually do them all what if they run out of money what if the population grows really fast what if what if what if and with this process we found some robust decisions we found that of their 14 projects there were three that made sense no matter what if they could get started on these right away and through through the same process we found two that didn't make sense no matter what if they could chuck these out and save themselves half a billion dollars everybody was happy that day it was ceviche for everybody and the rest rather than asking should we do them or not we created a flexible plan that shows them what to do and when to do it as conditions evolve and we showed them that conservation has to be a key part of any implementation plan without this wide lens of possibility they would be banking on having water for their kids based on a dicey set of predictions and a brittle and more expensive plan with this robust and flexible plan though they're confident that they're prepared for the future even though they still don't know what it'll be now Leamas story is about adapting to climate change living with climate change but I can't leave here today without telling you the other half of the story which is that we have to mitigate climate change we have to stop it from getting worse to avoid that risk of catastrophe and so let's use that wide lens of possibility let's ask those what if questions defined robust ways to reduce our carbon footprint climate changes my life's purpose it's it's why I get out of bed in the morning that and my daughter is usually calling for me but we face difficult decisions every day you and I face difficult decisions buy a new house or continue renting stay at home with a new baby or go back to work find assisted living for an aging parent or help them live at home alone these are difficult questions and so often we try to answer them through that narrow lens of prediction and we find ourselves stuck because we can't make frictions crystal balls don't exist but you don't have to be stuck and the key lies in that tiny two-word question what if what if is such a powerful question because it strips away our assumptions it opens our eyes to the universe of possible things that could be and the multitude of actions we could take what if is the key to looking through that wide lens of possibility and finding robust solutions so the next time you're faced with a difficult decision don't ask what's next ask what if thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 142,455

Rating: 4.2647552 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Alternative energy, Behavior, Benefit, Big problems, Business, Change, Choice, Climate Change, Communication, Community, Conservation, Cooperation, Creativity, Decision making, Developing World, Dreams, Economics, Energy, Environment, Foreign policy, Future, Global issues, Government, Green, Ideas, Impact, Innovation, Local issues, Oceans, Oil, Plants, Policy, Politics, Pollution, Recycling, Science, Sustainability, Trees, Urban Planning, Water, Wind energy

Id: nBCwlmMBmAQ

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2016