The Idea: We
spend much of our lives making decisions. Too often we use the wrong
tools to make them, and, not surprisingly, end up making the wrong
decisions. Or putting off making a decision at all.
When I was in university (1970s)
everyone thought Decision Support Systems would be the wave of the
future. Computers would be able to factor in all the criteria and
information and virtually make the decision for us. But while
technology has been helpful in organizing the information needed to
make decisions, it has only simplified and streamlined the
decision-making process in a few narrow areas, where little or no
judgement is called for. Most of us still spend an astronomical amount
of our time making decisions (or putting off making them) and looking
for information pertinent to decisions we need to make next.
I mentioned recently
Dave Snowden's multi-ontology sense-making project, diagrammed above.
His thesis is that before you can make sense of a situation (or make
decisions about it) you need to understand whether the underlying
environment is simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic. So in a simple
situation, such as prioritization of a small, fixed number of 'to dos',
simple tools like Getting Things Done can help substantially. The decision-making process in these situations is linear. Answer a set of simple questions and the decision (what to do next) is obvious.
 In a complicated
situation, such as deciding what an allergic patient is suffering from,
more sophisticated tools are needed to understand all the variables
(decision criteria and alternatives) and how they affect the decision. Systems Thinking
methodology, and the NASA process illustrated at right, are examples of
tools appropriate for complicated decisions. The decision-making
process is systematic.
Understand the information underlying the decision, and the
cause-and-effect relationships between elements of this information.
From this understanding of the 'mechanics' of the system, identify all
of the decision alternatives. Then assess the criteria that affect your
decision, and how important each criterion is, and the best alternative
'pops out'. Review the decision to ensure that it 'makes sense' (and if
it doesn't, go back and change the 'map' of the system, the
alternatives, the criteria and/or the weights until a sensible decision
is produced).
There are two main dangers with this methodology. The first is that if the environment is actually complex, and we have reduced it to merely complicated, the system map will be incomplete and erroneous, and so will the list of alternatives from which the decision is made.
The second danger is that we will have actually made the decision based
on more subjective criteria, and we will therefore deliberately bias
the system map, the alternatives, the decision criteria and the weights
to yield the predetermined answer. This is bad enough when we do it
knowingly and deliberately, to justify a decision we have made in our
own minds based on fuzzy or unfathomable logic, or no logic at all. But
there is some evidence that we do this all the time, perverting what
could be a useful decision-making process into a misleading and slanted
decision-justifying process.
There is little doubt, for example, that the selective ignoring and
distortion of facts, dubious cause-and-effect analysis, selective and
incomplete enumeration of alternatives and biased weighting was used to
justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds of its posing a threat to
US security. The result was 'sold' to the American public as a logical
decision, when it was either nothing of the sort, or else was the
result of logic and information that the administration was unwilling
to share with the citizens.
There are software tools
that take you through the NASA complicated-environment decision-making
process in more detail. I don't think they address either of the two
dangers above, but they can take you through the process if the number
of variables, relationships and decision criteria get unwieldy.
I think it is human nature to make initial decisions quickly and on the basis of the best information available that fits with our existing frames of understanding,
and to change our minds after that reluctantly. No software or other
tool is going to correct that, and make us more open-minded. We need to
acknowledge that our decision on what television programs to watch
today, or what websites to visit, for example, is unlikely to be
changed by adding more rigour to the decision-making process. Even the
way we 'map' the system: assess the situation, gather facts, assess
unknowns, and connect the dots of causality and implication, are
filtered by our existing frames, the mental models through which we
perceive and conceive. The best any tool can do is to draw our
attention to facts, relationships, alternatives and criteria we might
have missed.
What would be more useful is a tool that would allow us to see how
others facing the same decision process would go through these same
steps, and would give us some appreciation of how our frames colour our
decision-making. And of course, it would be useful to capture and tap
the Wisdom of Crowds
-- the collective decision that many informed, independent people would
make using the information, alternatives and criteria personally available to them through their
frames of understanding.
 In a complex
situation, not all of the pertinent information and variables are known or even
knowable, so cause-and-effect analysis is of limited use, and even the
universe of appropriate decision alternatives is likely to be too large
to enumerate.
In these situations, a more sensible approach is to focus on
discovering as much as possible about the environment in which the
decision must be made, and as many points of view of the potential alternatives
and their likely effects. The decision-making process is emergent.
An Open Space discovery process that involves as many of the thirteen
activities shown on the framework at right, and involves conversation
and collaboration with as many people as possible, is likely to lead to
the best decisions. In fact, as I suggested
the other day, it may be best to push the decision-making out to the
front-lines, to each individual involved in the discovery process, so
that they can each make the decisions in the context of their personal
situation.
And if all this wasn't difficult enough, often situations are not merely
simple, complicated or complex. Some complex environments may have
issues or challenges that are simple or complicated, and vice versa.
How about chaotic situations?
If you were present when the recent tsunami hit, or the current Marburg
or avian flu virus broke out, how would you decide what to do? You
would probably rely on your instincts -- we are programmed, after
all, with three million years of successful evolutionary learnings to
handle exactly such situations. The decision-making process in these circumstances is intuitive.
Four kinds of thinking -- linear, systematic, emergent, intuitive --
for four types of decision situations. No wonder it's so hard to make
decisions. And no wonder we are so tempted to put them off.
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6:50:25 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
