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DECISION STANDARDS
There are 3 basic kinds of decision corresponding to the 3 kinds of issue: The top option alone is taken up in One-answer decisions. If only one option can be implemented then the top highest priority option is the decision. All options are taken up in Do Everything decisions, in which all options can be – some must be - implemented. Priorities here indicate the degree of commitment and their ranking probably indicates the sequence of action. The top set of priority options are taken up in Balanced decisions where several options can or should be implemented. Critical questions about the final decisions include: Is the decision-making consistent? Is the decision coherent? Does it reflect intended policy? Do the team agree? Have they thought through the issue individually or together? Are all deciders satisfied this is the most justifiable decision available? A series of startling discrepancies are regularly revealed in management decision-making evaluated by Priorities Now. Team decisions are found to be at variance with the views and wishes of individual members of the team taken together. Each decider’s priorities between options are almost invariably at odds with their reasoning and objective. When discovering their implied priorities and explicit inconsistencies, deciders almost invariably want to revise their decisions if the issue is at all difficult and significant. Without going through such a process, deciders have to await feedback from real life on their unconfirmed and typically inconsistent decisions. Most deciders cannot face up to this reality. Reality can be a harsh teacher. When deciders are uncertain or conversely over-confident about their decisions, either as individuals or as team members, questions arise as to the rationality and the reliability of their judgements: How inconsistent are our priorities? When are we being inconsistent? How? How reliable and rational are our judgements overall? Are they satisfactory or questionable? Whether uncertain or overconfident about their priorities, deciders need some checks on the reliability of their judgements. Without such checks, priorities may be as arbitrary as those of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, or of Luke Rhinehart‘s Dice Man – illogical, rash, irrational, unreflective of their own views and experience. This is important because deciders tend to express more confidence in their own judgements than is warranted by reality. A decision standard is a reliability check on decisions. CONSISTENCY : The primary check on the reliability of decisions is for consistency. Like many anomalies inconsistency tends to be ignored by those who want to sleep more soundly at night than they deserve. They do so at their peril. Consistency is the degree to which logical transitivity is preserved across the individual’s judgements. Inconsistency does not necessarily indicate that the decider is wrong – only that he/she has not sorted out his/her mind on the issue concerned (unless of course he/she is completely mad). An individual decision standard indicates whether and how far the individual is acceptably consistent in his/her judgements about priorities. The standard used may be designed in terms of intrinsic norms (variations from 100% absolute consistency) and/or empirical averages (the mean consistency for deciders in a profession, specialism, company, nation etc.). A decider may have an obvious ranking inconsistency. He/she may have judged options A, B, and C as follows: B warrants more priority than C C warrants more priority than A Logically therefore B should warrant more priority than A BUT he/she actually judged that A has more priority than B. AN OBVIOUS RANKING INCONSISTENCY A decider may have a proportionate inconsistency. He/she may have judged the options A, B and C as follows: B warrants 4 times more priority than A C is only twice as important as A Logically therefore B should warrant more priority than A BUT he/she actually judged that C has more priority than B. A PROPORTIONATE INCONSISTENCY A decider may have a weighting inconsistency. He/she may have judged options A, B, and C as follows: B warrants twice the priority of C C warrants twice the priority of A Logically therefore B should have significantly more priority than A BUT the decider actually judged B warrants only marginally more priority than A. A decider may have a series of such inconsistencies, some more significant than others. A decision standard pinpoints his/her main inconsistency and assess the significance of all his/her inconsistencies taken together.

Overview Part 6 of 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7