28 THE INVESTOR
tional valuation methods. Intuitive types (creators), in contrast, love
playing with new ideas and theoretical abstractions. They are the
ones who build the elaborate computer models and develop elegant
theories like “efficient markets.” Never mind that they aren’t real—
they’re fun to dream up! The weakness of intuitive types is that
they get too far removed from reality and invent impractical mod-
els, or they come up with ideas that are “ahead of their time.”
(And suffer the consequences that Bert Lance referred to when he
said, “Pioneers get the arrows!”)THINKING (OBJECTIVITY)/FEELING (PASSION):
HOW PEOPLE MAKE DECISIONSAfter people have taken in data and played with some options,
there comes a time for decisions. By what process do people make
final decisions? Some tend to decide in a logical, detached way,
that is, thinking. These people prefer to look for an outside refer-
ence point, such as a law or standards or a formula, which will
allow them to pass judgment objectively. These people tend to focus
on tasks over people and may be thought of as tough-minded. Their
weakness may be the inability to see how decisions affect human
relationships and conditions. The feeling types focus on subjective
decisions. They are often frustrated by laws and standards and make
statements like, “Yes, that’s the law and it doesn’t make any sense!”
(Like 55-mile-per-hour speed limits for wide-open highways on clear
sunny days!) They prefer to go within themselves to their own value
systems, their own personal standards, and determine what seems
right subjectively. (65 MPH seems just fine, thank you.) They fo-
cus on people first, tasks second. They tend to be perceived as tender-
hearted. Their weakness is that they can be seen as arbitrary or
inconsistent by coworkers.
Words that describe each of these types are:04 ware 28 1/19/01, 1:02 PM