Make better decisions!

The three frameworks are integrative decision-making, acknowledging uncertainty, and inversion. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the common theme among the three methods below is that they emphasize the process and not the outcome. In an uncertain and complex world, the best we can do is to apply a process in an attempt to find the ‘least bad’ decision.

USE INTEGRATIVE THINKING

The first way to improve your decision-making is to practice integrative thinking. Integrative thinking is a decision-making process that involves constructively handling the tension between opposing ideas and perspectives.

Integrative decision-making can be described as a process in which you actively seek ways to bring together different ideas, perspectives, and interests to reach a solution or decision that is superior and balanced. This means that different options are not seen as contradictory or competitive but as complementary and potentially synergistic.

Through integrative thinking, you identify and understand the underlying interests and needs of all stakeholders and can therefore seek synergies and common solutions that satisfy multiple interests simultaneously. This can shift the focus from winning or losing to cooperation and creative problem-solving.

USE INVERSION

The second way to improve your decision-making is through inversion, which refers to reversing your thinking or looking at problems from the opposite perspective. Instead of solely focusing on how to achieve the desired outcome or make the ‘best’ decision, inversion involves thinking in reverse.

A common application of inversion is to conduct a pre-mortem analysis. In this process, individuals imagine that the decision or project has failed and work backward to identify potential causes and obstacles that led to that outcome. By envisioning negative scenarios and considering what could go wrong, decision-makers can proactively address these risks and improve the decision or plan accordingly.

Here is an example of how a pre-mortem can be conducted:

Suppose a company is planning to launch a new product on the market. Before the launch, the team can conduct a pre-mortem to predict possible reasons for the product’s failure.

• Step 1: The team gathers and imagines that one year has passed after the product’s launch, and it has failed. The team creates a fictional story about why it went wrong and lists all possible causes of the failure (e.g., poor marketing, low product quality, competition from similar products, high price).

• Step 2: Once all the causes are listed, the team convenes and carefully analyzes them. They discuss which causes seem most likely to negatively impact the product.

• Step 3: After identifying the most significant causes of failure, the team can devise a plan to counteract and minimize the risk of these causes. They can identify actions and strategies to address potential issues before they even arise, thus increasing the chances of the product’s success.

By conducting a pre-mortem, you can identify potential pitfalls and address them in advance. It helps decision-makers be proactive and make more informed decisions to avoid or mitigate potential problems that may arise along the way.

The practice of inversion encourages critical thinking, challenges assumptions, and helps uncover blind spots or overlooked factors. It encourages decision-makers to consider alternative perspectives and explore unconventional approaches. It can be a valuable addition to more traditional thinking models as it promotes a more comprehensive and balanced analysis of the problem, resulting in more robust and effective decisions.

ACKNOWLEDGE AND ACCEPT UNCERTAINTY

Finally, it’s also important to acknowledge uncertainty in decision-making and be aware of and accept that there is limited knowledge, information, and predictability regarding the possible outcomes of a decision. This means being humble in the face of uncertainty and realizing that it’s impossible to have absolute certainty or complete knowledge of the future.

When acknowledging uncertainty in decision-making, it becomes important not to try to eliminate or avoid uncertainty entirely but to actively manage it in a constructive manner. It involves being open to different scenarios, assessing and managing risks, and being prepared to adapt and make adjustments as needed. To understand uncertainty, you can, for example, analyze the available information, involve experts or advisors to gain different perspectives, conduct thorough risk analyses, and use methods such as scenario planning or simulations to explore various possible outcomes.

By acknowledging uncertainty, one can create a more realistic and flexible decision-making process while reducing the risk of making overly confident or impulsive decisions. Instead, it promotes a more analytical and reflective approach to decision-making.

By using integrative thinking, inversion, and acknowledging uncertainty, you can improve your decision-making process and facilitate making the ‘right’ decision (or at least the ‘least bad’ decision, as the future is uncertain no matter how well-crafted our decision-making process may be).

 

 

About the author

Experiences from Business Performance Management from Swedish clients such as Grant Thornton, GreenCarrier, Kunskapsskolan, Hydac, and others, as well as American company Team D3

julia.sehr@theinformationcompany.se +46 76 830 40 30 LinkedIn

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