You asked about getting different opinions in the room and remind me of a really nice

story about Barack Obama when he was trying to decide whether or not to go into Libya.

And in those meetings I was actually lucky enough to take a tour of the White House with

a friend who was in the administration and I got to see the room where those decisions

happen.

I wasn't in the room where it happens but I saw the room where it happens.

That's Eric Johnson.

He teaches at Columbia Business School at Columbia University.

He's also the head of, and seriously this is real, the Center for Decision Sciences.

Beyond that he's the author of the elements of choice, why the way we decide matters.

There's a small table where all the principles as they talk about them sit, all the adults

in the room.

On the outside are the junior people.

Now those junior people are much more important than you and I to the world.

They are assistant secretary, under secretary, things like that.

He started the meeting by saying I want to start to hear from the kids, the people on

the outside of the room because he suspected they would have a slightly different opinion

than their bosses.

So that's a really nice example of using the feel for the room to get in our argument

that wouldn't have been first out.

Barack Obama could run a room.

He knew that dominant voices tend to determine decisions and when it came to the room where

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