- The recognition-primed decision (RPD) model: experienced decision-makers don’t compare options — they size up a situation, recognize it as a case they’ve handled before, and evaluate the first workable response by imagining how it will play out, rather than running a formal comparison [1]. Decision makers look for the first workable option, not the best one [1].
- In what Klein calls “the secretary problem,” an experienced office manager can interview one candidate and recognize they’re well above average with no further comparison, while a novice hiring manager has to interview many people just to learn what “better than average” looks like [2].
- In a study of CPR, paramedics who’d actually performed CPR correctly picked the real paramedic on a test videotape 9 times out of 10, and novices picked correctly 5 times out of 10 [2]. CPR instructors, who taught the rules but had never done CPR on a real patient, picked correctly only 3 times out of 10 — the real paramedic wasn’t following the textbook hand placement they taught [2].
- Klein describes “pretenders”: people who have mastered many procedures and whose actions are smooth, showing many of the outward signs of expertise, but who can’t improvise once a situation is pushed off the standard script, and have trouble explaining how the current state of affairs came about or how it will play out [2].
Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
Klein's book on naturalistic decision making — how experienced practitioners such as firefighters, nurses, and military commanders actually make decisions under pressure, including the recognition-primed decision model and what experts notice (and are surprised by) that novices miss.
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- 1998 · MIT Press
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- Amazon
When you’re hiring and worried your gut reaction is too fast to be trustworthy: the RPD model says that’s what real expertise looks like once you’ve built it — recognizing the case and acting, not weighing options side by side. The failure mode isn’t speed; it’s mistaking a snap judgment made with no track record for one earned through pattern-matching built over real reps.
When someone has taught or coached a skill for years but never done the job under real conditions: the CPR-instructor result is the specific warning. Teaching credentials and rule-fluency are not operating expertise, and can actively mislead the instructor into favoring textbook form over what actually works — don’t let a teaching background stand in for a track record when you need someone to judge live performance.
When a candidate or advisor sounds confident and polished but hasn’t been tested outside the standard script: ask what they’d do if the situation broke from the pattern. Klein’s “pretenders” look like experts right up until something unexpected happens — the tell is whether they can reason about how a situation got there and where it’s going, not how smoothly they execute the known cases.