Like analyzing a chess board to visualize the implications and inclinations of the different moves of the different players, each of us looked at the situation from every angle. After a lot of discussion we remained split: About half of us thought the ECB would print more money to buy the bonds and about half thought they wouldn’t, because breaking with the Germans would threaten the Eurozone even more. While such thoughtful and open exchanges are essential, it’s also critical to have mutually agreed-upon ways of resolving them to arrive at the best decision. So we used our believability-weighting system to break the stalemate.

We did that using our Dot Collector tool, which helps us surface the sources of our disagreements in people’s different thinking characteristics and work our way through them based on their believabilities. People have different believability weightings for different qualities, like expertise in a particular subject, creativity, ability to synthesize, etc. These dots are determined by a mixture of ratings, both from peers and tests of different sorts. By looking at these attributes, and also understanding which thinking qualities are most essential to the situation at hand, we can make the best decisions.

In this case, we took a believability-weighted vote, with the qualities chosen being both subject-matter expertise and ability to synthesize. Using the Dot Collector, it became clear that those with greater believability believed Draghi would defy Germany and print money, so that is what we went with. A few days later, European policymakers announced a sweeping plan to buy unlimited quantities of government bonds, so we got it right. While the believability-weighted answer isn’t always the best answer, we have found that it is more likely to be right than either the boss’s answer or an equal-weighted referendum.
