A Holiday Resolution for Decision Makers
0 Comments Published by John Dillard on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 12:12 PM.
This holiday season, I've been giving some thought to the kinds of conflicts we see in decision-making and how they might be resolved with some Christmas cheer.
There are two distinct camps of decision-makers out there: dataheads and those who work from the gut. While there are many who can blend these two styles, there is inevitably tension between the two. The tension manifests itself as conflict between decision makers, internal conflicts within ourselves, or (in the worst case) indecision. In the very worst case, suspicion and resentment can keep these two styles from interacting and achieving great results.
These conflicts arise because decision makers often don't know how to reconcile the need to make snap decisions based on experience and intuition (a la Blink) and the need to make decisions that are defensible, traceable, and airtight.
Camps advocating decision making based solely on one or the other is by nature flawed. One camp--the dataheads--underestimates both the human ability to make quick judgments and the human need to make an emotional commitment to a decision that goes beyond the math. The other camp is too quick to trust the gut when data is readily available, or (at worst) rejects data that contradicts our intuition (Freakonomics is my favorite reference work on how our gut can be very wrong).
The best decisions blend good data and the experience of decision makers. There are great models that can make this work; Analytic Hierarchy Process and Conjoint Analysis can apply modeling to the preferences of human beings. Decision trees and probability analysis are rooted in many cases in the gut instincts of experts on the likelihood of certain outcomes.
The moral of the story: these 2 camps can not only get along, but they can act as "force multipliers" for one another. This holiday, dataheads and gut decision makers should resolve to get along in the new year. Better yet, keep the eggnog coming until you're fast friends.
There are two distinct camps of decision-makers out there: dataheads and those who work from the gut. While there are many who can blend these two styles, there is inevitably tension between the two. The tension manifests itself as conflict between decision makers, internal conflicts within ourselves, or (in the worst case) indecision. In the very worst case, suspicion and resentment can keep these two styles from interacting and achieving great results.
These conflicts arise because decision makers often don't know how to reconcile the need to make snap decisions based on experience and intuition (a la Blink) and the need to make decisions that are defensible, traceable, and airtight.
Camps advocating decision making based solely on one or the other is by nature flawed. One camp--the dataheads--underestimates both the human ability to make quick judgments and the human need to make an emotional commitment to a decision that goes beyond the math. The other camp is too quick to trust the gut when data is readily available, or (at worst) rejects data that contradicts our intuition (Freakonomics is my favorite reference work on how our gut can be very wrong).
The best decisions blend good data and the experience of decision makers. There are great models that can make this work; Analytic Hierarchy Process and Conjoint Analysis can apply modeling to the preferences of human beings. Decision trees and probability analysis are rooted in many cases in the gut instincts of experts on the likelihood of certain outcomes.
The moral of the story: these 2 camps can not only get along, but they can act as "force multipliers" for one another. This holiday, dataheads and gut decision makers should resolve to get along in the new year. Better yet, keep the eggnog coming until you're fast friends.
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