e-Columns

November 2005 e-Column

Understanding Decision-Makers

At Advanced Decisions, we are constantly trying to live up to our name. We study our own decision-making and the decision-making of software development teams and engineering group. In doing this, we have made a few observations on how to spot good decision-makers and how to spy bad ones.

The tell-tale sign of a good decision-maker is that he or she can make good decisions even in the face of uncertainty. By quickly evaluating worst-cases and making explicit the doubts, risks, and assumptions, good decision-makers are open to explore a range of options. This analysis may cause the data to lose their rosy color, but good decision-makers accept this, because it means they are deciding based on reality rather than fantasy.

Bad decision-makers comes in two general classes. The first class are impatient thinkers who prefer action to analysis. The second class is the exact opposite, they are patient thinkers who prefer analysis to action. For impatient thinkers, the lack of analysis and thought can lead to a few wins, but as a rule will lead to problems based on unforeseen consequences. For the Analyzers, decisions are not made, but forced by time or events, and this means that they are often unprepared for the next steps, in addition to being mentally exhausted.

Understanding the way a person balances action and analysis, and talks about all data, even the what ifs that are the most potentially disastrous, are the most simplistic ways to assess the quality of a decision-maker.