Building a Rational Decision Making Process
Overview
Given that rational decision making can be a highly theoretical subject, it is hardly surprising when decisions
are made that fall short of
the ideal standard. Knowing this, many organizations explicitly create a decision making process
in order to move their decisions closer to the ideal.
Most decision processes are designed specifically to avoid the known
behavioural traps.
Example Considerations
There is no single best decision making process. However, a number of possible recomendations have emerged as
- Avoid Decision Paralysis : knowing that having too many decisions can lead
to decision paralysis means that
any decision process should strive to limit the number of choices when making a final choice. A sample
best practice in this regard is the
mece framework.
- Utilize the Wisdom of Crowds : leaders should build a process that gathers inputs from
many diverse viewpoints, while striving to avoid the traps that occur from
social proof.
- Prepare to be Wrong : recognizing that decision making occurs within an inherently probabilistic
situation, decision makers need to be cognizant of any assumptions that drive their decision making, and to test and contiually monitor whether any
new information has invalidated those assumptions. As time progresses, it may be necessary to make tactical adjustments to the decision, or
possibly to abandon a decision entirely.
