<p>The rap on decision making is that it’s hard. There may be a few super bright people with an almost magical ability to consistently do it well, but the rest just get by. It was seen in many researches that almost anyone can learn to be a good decision maker—and that the key to it is carefully and continually engaging in something we call social exploration. Social explorers spend enormous amounts of time searching for new people and ideas—but not necessarily the best people or ideas. Instead, they seek to form connections with many different kinds of people and to gain exposure to a broad variety of thinking. Explorers winnow down the ideas they’ve gathered by bouncing them off other people to see which ones resonate. Generally, those ideas are micro strategies—examples of actions that might be taken, circumstances conducive to the action, and possible outcomes. Then, by assembling a great set of micro strategies, social explorers make good decisions. But how exactly does the exploration process generate ideas that lead to the right decisions? And are certain techniques critical to successful exploration? In this article, we’ll attempt to answer those two questions.</p>