Owner: Anna Schuttenhelm URL:http://www.robustdecisions.com/making-robust-decisions/ Join Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:57:14 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Robust Decisions provides everything your team needs to avoid revisiting "final" decisions, unstick deferred decisions and end meetings with time-critical decisions. The Accord suite of tools are easy to learn and use. Designed to help team com Site statistics:Click here
Cognitive problems in making decisions 2008-06-17 11:43:50 I have been reading "How Doctors Think" by Jerome Groopman. It is one of two books with the same title. Basically, reading this will make you scared to go to the doctor as doctors are human and make lousy decisions, just like all the rest of us. He has a good chapter titled "The Uncertainty of the Expert" which focuses on my favorite topic, decision making
with uncertain information. All of Gr Read more:Cognitive
, problems
Bayesian Brain and Bayesian Teams 2008-06-12 08:40:57 An interesting article "Is This a Unified Theory of the Brain
?" appeared in the New Scientist (full text) on May 28th. This is basically a discussion of the work and theories of neuroscientist Karl Friston of the University College in London. His work is based on an earlier theories that the brain makes decisions by trying to make sense out of the uncertainties in the outside world. Basically,
Decision Making for KM and BI 2008-06-11 14:56:12 A June 10th article "Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence" tries to tease apart KM and BI. In the piece the author, Richard Herschel, refers to Gartner's definitions of the two terms:
BI= a set of all technologies that gather and analyze data to improve decision makingKM = a systematic process of finding, selecting, organizing, distilling and presenting information in a way that improve Read more:Decision Making
Gut decisions don’t work well in many situations 2008-06-10 01:00:12 There has been a recent spate of best-selling books that support the notion that you should go with your gut when making a decision (e.g. Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer and Gary Klein’s The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work).
The authors of these books state that for many decision
A Justification is Not a Decision 2008-06-10 00:57:54 There are two kinds of decision-making: justification and selection. Justification occurs when the result is a foregone conclusion - the choice is made in advance of any argument or consideration. This often happens when the boss already has his favorite option in mind and wants information to “prove” that it is the right choice. I have seen this during my career in product design and the nat
Stuck in ‘Analysis Paralysis'? 2008-06-09 15:45:48 Unresolved decisions can be very damaging to an organization. You know something needs to be done but can't decide what to do. Deliberation continues among your staff without an actionable conclusion. You have ‘analysis paralysis'. Your operation is not moving forward, but you're using resources and your competition is not standing still.
Symptoms of ‘Stuck
' decision making include the fo Read more:Analysis
What is decision making, anyway! 2008-07-03 08:03:56 I track the term "decisionmaking
". Like most terms the more yo think about it, the more you realize that it is used rather loosely. The word "decision" itself is really a noun but is often used in its verb form. As a noun, it is the result of a process (to be discussed in a minute) that is a call to action. I have decided to marry Adele. I have decided to walk through the doorway. I have dec
Most estimates suck 2008-07-01 09:29:51 The rebuilding of the World Trade Center (WTC) is behind schedule and over budget. According to the executive director of the Port Authority, Christopher Ward "The schedule and cost estimates for the rebuilding effort that have been communicated to the public are not realistic," (from AP article). I can only say "Duh!" All decisions are based on estimates of the murky future. In most public wor
Decision Anchoring 2008-06-24 13:08:37 A nice summary of how results can be anchored just appeared on the web. This human behavior has great implications in business and technical decisions.Anchoring sets a biased context for estimation. It is a cognitive limitation that affects the quality of our decisions. Anchoring occurs, for example, when a manager asks for an estimate with something like: "I don’t see how we could commit more t
Event Risk vs Decision Risk 2008-07-12 18:56:36 I was just gave a presentation at the IG's (Inspector General's) office. They are concerned about the risks involved when they make decisions. What they don't realize is that there are two kinds of risk they have to worry about, event risk and decision risk.Event risk is what most people mean they talk about "risk". It is the expected value of an event, its undesirable consequences and probabil
Evidence Based Decisions 2008-07-08 12:50:34 I have begun to work on intelligence agency decision-making and, in doing so, realized there were two different types. I have never seen this decision-making dichotomy written up anywhere and cant find it in the literature (any literature).The first decision-making formulation is the standard process where the goal is to choose the best alternative from a list. This is facilitated by comparing ea Read more:Evidence
, Decisions
Choosing the best hypotheses 2008-07-22 08:11:52 Many problems revolve around choosing the best hypothesis - the one that best explains some observations. This is a cornerstone of science and medicine, and is the day-to-day reality of intelligence agencies. Choosing the best hypothesis is a form of decision making. But there are some differences from traditional decision making problems as I discussed in an earlier blog.I want to compare two app
Psychology Research Misses the Reasons for Decision Making Teams 2008-08-20 10:19:37 I am reading “Straight Choices: The Psychology of Decision Making
” by Benjamin Newell, David Lagnado and David Shanks (Psychology Press 2006). It is a very good summary of decision making from the viewpoint of cognitive psychology. It makes some muddy topics very clear. However, it totally fails in Chapter 14, Group Decision Making. This isn’t the authors’ fault – all work on team or gro Read more:Research
, Reasons
Decision making maturity 2008-08-08 08:35:14 I just returned from an ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) meeting in NYC. During my time there I discussed the concept of decision making
maturity with three different groups and thought it worth writing about. Best to do in context with my career.When I was trained as an engineer, I focused on how components and assemblies were shaped, manufactured and functioned. This element-cen
Why pairwise comparisons are a waste of time for finding criteria importance 2008-09-11 20:09:30 Many people use pairwise comparisons during their decision making efforts. First, this method may be used to determine the relative importance (the weightings) of the criteria
. Second, pairwise comparisons are sometimes used to evaluate the alternatives relative to the criteria. BOTH OF THESE ARE A WASTE OF TIME!! Don’t get me wrong, I think pairwise comparisons can be helpful, just that there a Read more:waste
Are two heads better than one? 2008-09-01 08:07:09 I was listening to NPR the other day and heard the word “constult”. This word is in Oxford English Dictionary (I checked). It is a verb that means “To play the fool together.” Both examples in the OED are from the 17th century: 1630 J. TAYLOR (Water P.) World's eighth Wonder Wks. II. 67/1 Some English Gentlemen with him consulted And he as nat'rally with them constulted. 1659 GAUDEN Slig Read more:better
More on Criteria Development 2008-09-19 10:42:16 In my blog of Sept 10, I noted that my newsletter statements in "Robust Criteria for Robust Decisions" had started an interesting conversation with Ralph Keeney. In the newsletter I had stated: Research has shown:1. The more effort put into understanding the criteria early in the process, the better the decision2. Too little effort is generally put into understanding criteria. He asked for referen Read more:Development
Robust Criteria for Robust Decisions 2008-09-15 12:12:23 I just wrote a newsletter that appear on my web site on how to develop criteria and titled "Robust
Criteria for Robust Decisions
" In it I state:Research has shown:The more effort put into understanding the criteria early in the process, the better the decision Too little effort is generally put into understanding criteria. After sending this to my mailing list, I received a message from Ralph Keen
Risk Management as a decision issue 2008-10-08 11:45:45 The term “risk management” has been around for a long time in financial, technical and medical practice. It is a term that is very loosely used and I want to dive in with a decision
-centric view just to further muddy the waters.A good place to begin is with a formal definition of “risk”. If you enter “risk definition” into Google you will get over twenty-five definitions; some are re Read more:Management
, issue
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