How do we make decisions?

With the number of decisions that we make every day, it is astonishing that the process of making decisions is not well understood. So, how do we make the best choice?

The very act of deciding seems a bit like the piece of soap in the bathtub: the more you want to get a grip on it, the more it slips away.

Much is talked today about VUCA conditions, and decision-making in complex adaptive spaces with highly uncertain outcomes, volatile ingredients and complex relationships is a different animal altogether to deal with. Many leaders that we worked with, when asked to portray their decision-making process in a way that it could be followed or repeated by others, tend to come up with a list of actions rather than a solid decision-making process. That made us curious. We ventured more into the terrain of decision-making.

The weird thing is that even in ‘normal’ conditions, people are not aware of how they make choices. Some people pose their questions attentively, gather relevant information superbly and then “wing” it with the actual act of deciding. And then come up with a perfect explanation in hindsight.

So, starting to establish a baseline around decision making, let’s consider basic steps, drawing on the Lectical Decision Making Assessment and Russo & Schoemaker (Winning Decisions):

1. Framing: the general goal of the decision maker, including the way they think about the knowledge upon which they base their decision

2. A realistic approach to gathering intelligence

3. Coming to Conclusions: organising and analysing the information, and a way to coordinate different perspectives (weighing)

4. An approach to communicating and implementing the decision made

5. Learning from Experience, including a way to measure the decision’s effectiveness, so adjustments can be made

   
   

Outlook: In some of the next blogs, I intend to bring in more and more layers of decision making, exploring input from different topics, authors, influencers and frameworks:

Dave Snowden, Gary Klein, Bonnitta Roy, Gerd Gigerenzer, Andy Clarke; Lectica.org; concepts/models/ methods: Framing, Cognitive Biases; Intuition; Sensemaking; Cynefin Framework, OODA Loop, Risk vs. Uncertainty, Heuristics, Constraints, Learning, Failure, Innovation, Theory of Change….