Myths, Factors and Bias – or why you need to design your decision.

Recent events suggest that decision making is getting ever more difficult.  Institutions of all sorts – governments, companies, charities, organisations – seem to be making decisions that are sub-optimal.   This often leads to bad outcomes or, in some cases, outright failure.  To understand why this is happening, we need to first expose some decision making myths, and then explore the contemporary decision making context or ‘space’.  

Three Myths

While there are many to choose from, the following are my current top three decision making myths:   

  • First that knowledge and understanding are the same.  In other words, that how much is known (or believed to be known) is a valid predictor of how much is understood.  This is not true. 
  • Second, that all human beings are naturally good decision makers and thus do not need any particular education or assistance to make good decisions.  This is also not true.  
  • And third, that successful decision making is a science and thus all about data and numbers.  This, again, is not true.

There is nothing novel here, except perhaps to those who have never really thought about the practice of decision making.  Also, and to be fair to the many who have not, there has not necessarily been sufficient reason to do so.  Many leaders and decision makers have been getting away with ad hoc, off-the-cuff, sub-optimal decision making for a long time, with little consequence to their success or reputation. This, however, is no longer a safe behaviour.  Rather, the contemporary decision making environment makes it an increasing risky and perhaps dangerous choice, and one that must be avoided, if there are not to be negative consequences for both executives and their institutions.

Four Factors

This contemporary environment is shaped by four interlinked and self-reinforcing factors, all of which make decision making more difficult:  

  • In today’s digital world, there is a profusion of data – decision makers can now know and be expected to know so much more about almost anything:
  • To which can be added the ubiquity of connectivity – almost anybody (not just the decision makers) can know, or think they know almost anything.  Together, these factors enlarge the ‘decision space’ while paradoxically making it harder for the decision makers to hide or obscure their actions within it.  
  • Both are exacerbated by the speed at which this data can be accessed drives an unreasonable demand for instant decisions from all associated stakeholders and shareholders.  Meanwhile, the media will report slow decisions while competitors will seek to revel in them.  
  • And finally, there is opinion – or the opportunity for almost everyone to know the alternative options to the actual decision almost before it has been made.  Thus, predisposing audiences and stakeholders to challenge the decision before it has stood the test of time.  

Bias

Unfortunately, the biases inherent in human cognition (thinking) serve to both reinforce these myths and factors, and to increase the poor human behaviours associated with them.  Add groupthink, confirmation bias and optimism bias (to name but three of many) and in today’s decision space, it is increasingly possible for decision makers to think they know so much more but actually understand so much less.  Leading them to the Alice in Wonderland world of being perfectly persuadable to “believe seven impossible things before breakfast”.   

So, in today’s decision space, there is no longer anywhere for poor decisions and those who make them to hide.     

Design the Decision

How, therefore, can decision makers arrive at ‘clear decisions for a complex world’?  In the often challenging and fast-paced situations of today, the answer lies in ‘Decision Vantage’.    This is a set of context-specific techniques to prepare for, design, test, audit, measure and govern the entire decision making process.  And link it seamlessly to the associated planning and/or strategy development activity.  Decision Praxis, in partnership with SixFigureGrid, can help you do this.  We combine the best of military decision-making practice, business studies models and academic research to provide a completely novel, tailored and integrated approach to 21st Century decision making.   

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