Decision Quality Manifesto

Decisions come from the stories we tell ourselves and others. Listen to the stories you tell yourselves. Listen to the stories other people tell themselves. A “justification” or a “rationalization” is the story we tell ourselves so we can feel good about what we did. Every decision has a story going in, every decision has a story coming out. What’s yours?
Decisions aren’t found under a rock. Decision-making is what makes us human. It’s why we have those big frontal lobes. Yes, not making a decision is making a decision. You can choose to remain on autopilot like dogs and hamsters do, or to pause, pull over, and actually make a decision.
Intentions are not decisions. So much of what we think of as decision-making is really “intention” making. We really believe we’re going to do this or that. But unless and until we spend our time or money, we’re just hopin’ and wishin’.
Divide and conquer. You can’t figure out the real problem, identify creative alternatives, make trade-offs, do research, and grapple with all the stuff you don’t know all at the same time. Those are separate thought processes. Respect that. Do each one separately and then bring them together at the end.
Process matters. The most interesting decisions are the ones for which the results don’t show up until much later. So the only way you can be at all sure that you’ve “made a good decision” is to use a process. You don’t want to miss anything obvious. You don’t want to do anything dumb. You don’t want to do more than you need to. That’s why you need a process.
Make your process transparent. If the decision involves only you, do what you want. But if you want others to come along for the ride, you need to show them not just what you decided, but how it was decided.
No fictitious involvement. This is the opposite of the previous point. Don’t just involve people to involve them. Find people who can help you, hurt you, and add value to what you’re doing. Give them votes, voice, or visibility. Figuring out who gets what role is where the action is.
Build commitment step by step. Avoid rework through regular check-ins with the people who matter and particularly with the people how have the power to veto your decision.
The first problem is seldom the real problem. Words matter. Pretend you’re hearing and seeing this for the first time. There are at least ten other ways to describe whatever problem you’re working on. A “holiday,” “vacation,” and “time off” aren’t the same things.
Beware of solutions masquerading as problems. When the problem and the solution are the same, you don’t have a real decision. There’s a difference between “Should we go to Spain this year?” and “Where should we go on vacation?”
Be hard on the problem, not the people. Consider this a plea for logic. Get cranky some other time. When it comes to the physics of making a decision—figuring out the real problem, sorting out choices, figuring out what’s important, and grappling with uncertainty—personal pique and poor social graces have no place.
Talk to somebody new. Find someone you don’t agree with and ask them what he or she would do. Get out of your circle. Unplug from your Faves. Get off Facebook. Actually talk to someone new.
Raise conflict early. If you and I have different points of view on the problem we’re trying to solve, now would be a good time to hash that out. Same with what we think is important (what we call values). It doesn’t get easier later. It gets harder.
Focus your attention on what matters most. It’s easy to get stuck, lost, and waylaid by what’s in front of us. But that piece of data or stone in our shoe may not be the most important part about the decision. Use your energy for the important parts and stop obsessing and arguing about what doesn’t really matter.
You need at least three alternatives to make a decision. Actually you need only two. And they can’t be, “should I do this thing that seems really attractive, or what I’m doing now which I hate.” Those really aren’t alternatives. Give yourself at least a conservative, and aggressive, and a “hedged” choice.
Hit the guardrails. Not a good idea whilst driving, but a great thought while exploring alternatives. Stop landing on what’s initially comfortable and go find the edges. Find an alternative that sounds completely nuts. And then find something in that idea that you can use, do, or try.
It’s not what you know. It’s what you don’t know you don’t know. Uncertainty is what makes difficult decisions difficult. That’s why they’re called decisions instead of foresight. The issue isn’t what you think you know. It’s not even what you know you don’t know. It’s what you don’t know you don’t know that can hurt you.
There are no clairvoyants, but you can still ask. This is related to the “things you don’t know” idea. Ask yourself, what is the one piece of information you would want from a soothsayer if one popped up right now? What do you really, really wish you knew? Figuring out that question is often the key to figuring out what you’re really trying to decide.
It’s easier to be critical than creative. It’s also easier to be critical than “correct.” Put away the red pencil. Most people give themselves too few alternatives because they’re too busy finding what’s wrong with them, rather than how they might be right.
Sometimes numbers can be used to tell a story. In business we’re particularly fond of numbers. Of data. Of business cases. Of analysis. But what I see in a set of numbers and what you see are likely to be completely different. That’s where the story comes in. What do the numbers say? Why do they say it?
Take personal responsibility. Once you’ve made a decision, own your process and own your results. If it doesn’t come out the way you hoped, learn from it and live with it. Ducking responsibility does nobody any good, least of all you.
Experiments are failures we learn from. Fear of making a mistake is the death to creative problem solving and fearless decision-making. That’s why movie studios make sequels and why we keep doing different versions of the same thing. It’s not the “mistake” that’s the problem. It’s learning nothing from it. Then it’s called an experiment.

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