How to Make a Decision
“Would you tell me, please, which way I out to go from here?” asked Alice. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care,” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
How to make a decision. Sounds simple enough, right? After all, we all make hundreds of decisions a day. But how do we know we are making the right decision?
In his excellent book on decision-making, Know What You Don’t Know, Dr. Michael A. Roberto points out a huge flaw in most decision making processes. He notes that most business schools today rely on what is known as the “Case Study” method of learning. Students are given a scenario in which they have a problem to solve, and then they go about deciding on the best solution. Can you see the flaw? The missing piece is the problem itself. In other words, the case study hands the student the problem to be solved, but in the real world, we often don’t recognize something as a problem until it is too late.
Another excellent resource is the book, Winning Decisions, by J. Edward Russo and Paul Schoemaker. If I were to be perfectly honest, after reading thousands of pages of expensive textbooks, attending hundreds of hours of lectures, and writing nearly half a million words in graduate school, the best thing I got out of the program was a moderate book you can pick up from Amazon for a few dollars. Seriously. And the first lesson it teaches? How to “frame” a problem; basically the same thing Dr. Roberto discovered.
Consider the example of a house residing on the edge of a forest near the sea shore. If you look out one window all you see is trees, and so your reality reflects that fact. But if you look out the opposite window, all you see is water, and your reality reflects that. But, taking a step back and looking at the whole picture, what is the true reality?
When confronted with a situation, most of us immediately go into gathering information mode, and then move into making a decision based on that information. But these are later steps in the process. What all three of these researchers found is that we make far better decisions when we take a few moments first to frame how we look at the problem. In other words, we must decide how to decide.
Ask yourself, what is the crux of the issue that I am facing? What is the primary difficulty? Also consider context. How should decisions like this one be made? Individually or in a group? Analytically or based on intuitive “gut” feeling? Is this a decision that needs to be made now? Or even at all? And perhaps most importantly, what are my strengths and weaknesses? What “frame” am I looking through? Does anyone else see it differently (i.e., an alternate frame)?
The poor misunderstood Cheshire Cat was correct. Framing decisions is crucial. It’s like the stories we hear of planes landing at the wrong airport. As Russo and Schoemaker suggest, “If you set out for the wrong destination, it will not be of much use in the end, even if you manage to arrive there intact and on time.”
Recent Comments
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So very true if we do not know where we are going it does not matter which path we take, we need to know what it is we want to achieve and how we are going to do it
By the way, just a quick glimpse I'd like to share......
Multitasking is the problem, energy and concentration are the issues......
I agree. Most research that I've seen seems to show that multitasking is a myth. While it is true that our minds can process information at an extremely rapid pace, we cannot think two thoughts at exactly the same time. Thus, when we try, we are actually less efficient. The key is to go deep, focusing on one thing at a time like a laser beam, rather than going wide and trying to process everything all at once. Great point.
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Sometimes you can never know until you have done it which was the right way to go!