Why DecisionPoint?
The primary way we influence the future – our own, that of others, the organization we work for – is through the decisions we make.
When I come to a decision point, am I prepared to make a “good” decision?
What do I do when I’m not sure what to do?
The objective of DecisionPoint Consulting Group is to collaborate with decision makers to clarify three things: what makes their decision complex and difficult to know what to do; what makes the decision important; and what are the sources of uncertainty that cloud the future consequences of action.
Making decisions with eyes open.
Why Decision Analysis?
There are usually three characteristics associated with hard decisions: I don’t know what to do, I really care about the outcome, and it isn’t clear what will happen after I take action.
I don’t know what to do: Because of technical or organizational complexity (or both), it is not clear what path forward is best; indeed, it may not even be clear what alternatives are available and feasible to pursue.
I really care about the outcome: I’m not comfortable to just “pick an option” and see what happens. The result or consequences of this decision really matter to me.
I don’t know what will happen once I take action: The result or consequences of my action are uncertain. Not only do I not know for certain what will happen, I may not even know – after the fact – what did happen. Because of elapsed time, other participants, changes in key factors, “luck,” or varying results over time, I may never be able to determine fully what results, if any, were due to my actions.
This means I can’t judge the quality of my decisions by their outcomes; I have to judge the quality of the outcome by the way in which I make the decision.
What exactly is a decision? One popular definition of a decision is an irrevocable allocation of resources. Until I actually allocate the resources (time, thought, travel, money, personnel, etc.), I have only planned, not acted. If you’ve read this far, your decision to allocate the time is irrevocable – you can’t get that time back. Planning is not nearly as emotionally involved as decision making; plans can be changed - decisions can’t.
In this way, decisions are bets: I believe that allocating resources in a certain way will result in a more desirable future than allocating them in a different way. I wouldn’t select a bet based solely on the fact that it was the cheapest bet; I would want to know something about the potential outcome, as well. The same would hold for the bet that is easiest or fastest, or the bet everyone else seems to be making; in each case, I would still want to know something about the expected results.
The objective of DecisionPoint Consulting Group is to collaborate with decision makers to clarify three things: what makes their decision complex and difficult to know what to do; what makes the decision important; and what are the sources of uncertainty that cloud the future consequences of action.
The field of decision analysis has developed many aids to clear thinking about complexity, values, and uncertainty since its beginning in the 1950s. It brought together utility theory for modeling value (the importance of the decisions), probability theory for modeling uncertainty, and the analytical tools of systems engineering, economics, and operations research to build models of decisions.
In the same way that engineers build models of bridges or planes to test their ideas and designs before building the real things, analysts use the tools of decision analysis to build models of decisions that can be tested and tried and better understood before making the real decision. The result is of these decision models is improved clarity of thought when one actually reaches the decision point.
Making decisions with eyes open.