Anti-patterns for decision making
There are pleasant times when we walk out of the meeting, with great satifcation that an useful decision is made and we’re able to make progress again; there are also many times we walk out of the meeting, our heads are filled with confusion and arguments, nothing has changed, did we just waste an hour and what should we do next?
Here is my reflection on the anti-patterns to make effective decisions and it’s still an on-going learning process.
Decide without learn
Ray Dalio in his book “Principles” has made it clear: “Decision making is a two-step process: first learning and then deciding”. Can you believe that, many times, people make the decision first then working backwards to find data to support the decision. This does not mean all the decisions made via this approach is wrong, but this does limit your possibility to get better outcomes.
Tips:
- Find one person who will oppose your point of view and try to understand their data and reasoning
- Ask yourself the question: how do I know I am right?
Decide without knowing
Too often we heard the statement “I have no choice and this is the only thing I can do”, this is a cue that we have our subconscious make decision for us without awareness.
Tip:
- Ask youself: Is that true? What would “my trusted friend/colleague/advisor” will do in this situation? This is forcing the subconscious process to be visible.
Assumption mistaken as decision
This is another trap preventing you to get broad options. This happened when people involved in decision making process shared the same unvalidated assumption. For e.g, one API has some performance issues, the team needs to decide how to fix it. There are options involved in: change the architecture or review the action which is taking longer. Yet given everyone assume event driven is the target architecture, thus the decision is made without validationing whether the architecture is the right fix.
Tip:
- Write the reasoning logic of the decision down and separate decisions with assumptions
- Make sure decisions are backed up by data
Decide at the wrong level
Complex decision making involves multiple levels of decisions, there is s decision hierarchy. Decision made at the wrong level (too high or too low) is the high risk for future execution, the better approach is the responsible party make the related decision. For e.g: people often think whether to go to cloud or not is a tech decision, but it’s not. Sometimes when people refuses to take responsibility as needed, you will see the decisions go up to very high level and takes months.
Tip:
- What is the scope of impact for this decision?
- Who is the responsible party for this decision?
- What’s the decision hierarchy?
Decide too early or too late
When there are too many moving parts related with a complex decision, it’s the time to consider the Last Responsible Moment (LRM) principle, which is defined as: “A strategy of not making a premature decision but instead delaying commitment and keeping important and irreversible decisions open until the cost of not making a decision becomes greater than the cost of making a decision.”
Tip:
- Do we have to make the decision now? Why?
- What’s the cost of not making a decision?
- What’s the cost of making a decision?
Decide without communicate
This will have a negative impact on organization when people’s understanding of the impact is smaller than it’s actual. If there is proper communication in place, organization can take fast mitigation to review/reverse the decision as needed. If there is no communication in place, the cost of reverse a decision will be much higher.
Tip:
- Create a live decision log at all levels
- Regularly review the decision log and learn from it
Summary
Decision making is a learning process, the only way to get better is to practice more. Here are the key steps to do so:
- Write down “what’s the decision to make”;
- What’s your criteria?
- Do we have enough data?
- What’s the outcome?
- Who should be involved in decision making?
- Is now a good time to make decision?