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Anatomy of a Decision
by:
Andrew Longman

Somehow a decision to “throw to the tight end over the middle in the face of a zone blitz” doesn’t seem to have much in common with a board’s decision to acquire a company, a plant manager’s decision to purchase a piece of capital equipment, a leadership team’s decision to redesign a business process, or a manager’s hiring selection. The quarterback’s “decisions” are made in seconds rather than deliberated over hours, days or weeks, but that in itself can’t preclude it from consideration as a “real decision”. To better understand how the decisions compare it is necessary to dissect the process behind effective decision making.
Decisions are driven by uncertainty; uncertainty about what the future should look like and how best to achieve it. The choice on a given morning to reach for the grapefruit juice instead of the cranberry juice isn’t really a decision, or at least it isn’t one most people struggle with. Either choice is likely fine or there is little uncertainty about how the choice will work out. But when individuals or groups come to a fork in the road, and there is uneasiness about taking the next step because the stakes are high, the options unclear and/or confidence low, then the importance of using an effective process is all the more important.

Know Your Purpose:

Key to success is first to be very clear about your purpose. What need is this decision trying to meet? Why is the decision needed? Are you selecting a new employee or trying to find a way to get needed work done? In the latter, there are many more options at hand. Sometimes, disagreement on the purpose of a decision is the principle barrier to gaining consensus or implementing a decision.

Evaluate Options:

It is then important to define the value the decision should create and evaluate alternatives consistently against those measures. Relative to the other options, how does this alternative perform against this objective? In total, when viewed against to all the objectives, how does it perform? Doing this objectively is also an effective way to surface and resolve conflict among decision-makers.

Assess Risk:

Risk should be examined separately and only around your most attractive options. It is not uncommon for people to shy away from an alternative (or even avoid making any decision) before assessing the upside simply because they obsess on the risks. Make visible the probability and cost of every risk. Consider if there are ways to lessen the risk by making it less likely and/or less serious.

Act:

Finally, it comes down to making a choice. Is the benefit worth the risk? If not, what’s the next best choice and does it produce enough benefit to justify its risk? Then commit to the choice by making a plan for implementation. How will the decision be put in place? Too often groups will politely agree to a decision only to let it die consciously or unconsciously by refusing to implement it.
For the quarterback, his process is made efficient by engineering it to a narrowly defined context. For a given play, he has perhaps six options. He looks at the defense and if the defense does A then he does B; if C then D. It is rules-based, driven by the play’s designed ability to defeat a given defense. To a great extent, the thinking was done ahead of time by the coaches when they designed the play. It is more reaction than deliberation. That does not minimize the mental challenge of being a successful quarterback, but that challenge is much different than what most business people face.

Most of business and life cannot be packaged into predictable and repeatable processes with engineered decision points. Executive dashboards and decision support systems help, but still leave much to be crafted from scratch. Many times a given decision will be made only once in a lifetime. The more important the decision, the more likely others are needed to get it right and/or get it implemented. And decisions are expressions of the values of the people who made them, and so the people involved must find a way to align their values and viewpoints. And in the end, there is no substitute for open, thoughtful, informed deliberation. Having a transparent and accepted decision-making process is critical to making that happen.

 

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