Decision making is mostly defined as ?the cognitive process of reaching a decision? where the word cognitive gives us a reassurance that decision making is something we do knowingly. Yes there are many decisions we make or avoid making knowingly but there are so many decisions we make everyday that we may not be consciously aware of. When we avoid a pothole without even having noticed it was there, when we flick off a speck of dust distractedly, etc, our mind has made decisions without our being conscious of them.
I prefer to define decision making simply as ?the process of making a choice between alternatives?. This helps us focus on the essential aspects and step-by-step process of decision making: ?identifying the objective?; ?gathering information?; ?generating alternatives?; ?using one of many available methods to assess them?; and, of course, the final act of ?making a choice?.
Enough and more has been written about assessment methods and tools that can optimise decision making. The first step for me is to recognise that both the decisions we make sub-consciously and consciously are affected by the interplay of certain factors. These factors affect the actual selecting mechanism, hence it is important to understand them, their impact and methods to control them.
Here are some of the factors that affect our decision making and tips to manage their impact on the quality of our decisions:
1) Time: Increased time-pressure hampers our ability to examine and objectively compare choices. We resort to quick elimination techniques based on estimation and past experience. Detailed cost-benefit and trade-off assessment is avoided and we often get attracted to default options.
Avoid postponing decisions, especially difficult ones, for the last minute. Note down the kind of decisions you might be called on to make at short notice and the information required to choose the best option. Keep yourself updated so you are not caught off-guard.
2) Cognitive bias: A cognitive bias is a deviation in judgement in particular situations or, simply put, an error in decision making, reasoning, analysing, remembering or other cognitive processes that happen due to our individual perceptions, beliefs, likes, dislikes, etc. While the list of cognitive biases is lengthy, some common ones that affect the quality of decision making are:
Anchoring bias: Relying too heavily on a single piece of information we consider important.
Confirmation bias: Searching for and paying more attention to information that confirms our perceptions or preconceived notions.
Bandwagon effect: The tendency to go with the herd and believe whatever the majority considers correct.
Illusion of control: Overestimating our influence over external or future events.
Choice-supportive bias: The tendency to remember our past decisions and choices as better than they actually were. To selectively remember positive outcomes of our choices.
Impact bias: The tendency to overestimate the period or depth of impact of a particular decision on future events or feelings.
Apart from the above, cultural differences and strong personal beliefs also have an impact on how we process information and arrive at decisions.
The first step to dealing with these is avoiding the most common cognitive bias which is called ?Bias Blind Spot? i.e. the tendency to be unaware of and thus failing to compensate for our own biases. A lot of us see ourselves as less biased than other people. I would urge you to introspect about your biases since most of us suffer from these to various degrees. Awareness is the first step to correction and once you become aware of your particular biases, it will be easier for you to make a conscious choice to leave them behind when making decisions.
3) Physical state: The impact of your physical state at the time of making a decision is undeniable. How often have you noticed yourself taking shortcuts in decision making or taking the least risk option or, worse still, allowing yourself to be convinced by someone else who seems to know what he/she is talking about when you are physically exhausted or stressed?
The risks we take when we make those important decisions in a state of physical exhaustion are something we often ignore on the spur of the moment but various scientific studies have shown a clear link between our level of physical well-being and the quality of decisions we take. So the next time someone is pushing you to take that call late in the evening after a long day, ask them to wait till morning unless it?s really imperative.
4) Emotions: For long, it was assumed that decision making is a rational process that seeks to maximise expected returns based on assessment of available knowledge. In the 1980s, decision-making researchers identified phenomena that violated this assumption and by the 1990s it was discovered that making decisions, especially those with high risk and uncertainty, involves biases and emotions at an implicit level.
The involvement of emotions can have both a positive and a negative impact. Emotions can play an important and positive role in guiding decisions especially in situations where the effect of choices is uncertain because emotions bias decision making towards choices that minimise punishment while maximising reward.
But if we are in a highly emotional state, it would seriously hamper our logical reasoning process and cloud our judgement. Remember the time when you turned down a nice opportunity or invitation just because you were in a foul mood? So the next time you are making a hasty decision in an overly positive or negative mood, step back, take a deep breath, count to 10 and focus on the facts again.
5) Memory: Past experiences have a major impact on future decision making. Only our memories are rarely perfect. We remember extreme outcomes more readily than average ones and we remember results and emotions more readily than the actual facts.
Also, at every moment, our brain is sub-consciously mapping our current experiences to earlier similar experiences which guide most of our instinctive reactions and responses. That is the reason why we can perform a lot of mechanical activities without being consciously aware of them. The catch here is that our sub-conscious brain is instinctively looking for similarities to find the closest benchmark in our history of experiences and will guide our responses based on the closest fit it can find. In a decision making situation we need to consciously focus on the new variables and differences to alert and balance our sub-conscious mind.
6) Mental energy: ?Good decision making is not a trait ? It?s a state, a state that fluctuates,? says RF Baumeister, a social psychologist who has done extensive study on decision making fatigue. Experiments done by Baumeister and his colleagues have thrown up some very interesting facts about how mental energy gets depleted with every choice and decision we make during the day, eventually leading to a state of mental fatigue, which may not be as easily recognisable as physical fatigue, but is equally, if not more, dangerous.
Mental fatigue can make you vulnerable to people who know how to time their pitches since it makes you more prone to the ?anchoring bias? because it?s easier to focus on one aspect. Often no action or default option becomes the easiest to choose if taking any action requires detailed assessment.
It is best to determine what time of the day you are at your most alert and refreshed, and schedule your toughest and most important decisions for that time. And remember not to take decisions on an empty stomach as the brain also needs glucose to function. Scientific experiments have proven that when glucose is low, the brain begins to get more attracted to options that give immediate rewards and pays less attention to long-term gains.
The best decision makers are the ones who know when not to trust themselves.?RF Baumeister
The author is a freelance transformation expert, trained coach, change management consultant and the CEO of a 32-year-old small business group.
handashweta@gmail.com
