It’s Your MoveCreating Valuable Decision Options When You Don’t KnowWhat to Do

Robert D. Brown III

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This version was published on 2013-09-10

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©2013 Robert D. Brown III

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Also By Robert D. Brown IIIBusiness Case Analysis with R

“We are our choices.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

Contents

1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 “What Should I Do?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 Why You Need This Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.4 The Full Scope of Effective Decision-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.5 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51.6 Complementary Resource: Integrated Decision Hierarchy and Strategy Table Template 6

1 INTRODUCTION1.1 Acknowledgments

• This publication includes material (C) 1983-2002 by Kenneth R. Oppenheimer.• Thanks to Wendy Brown Davis, who generously donated the beautiful photograph of thegray squirrel for the cover. “peek a boo, oh yeah I see you” (C) Wendy Brown Davis∼Canon5D Mark III & EF 70-200 mm/ f2.8 L IS II USM∼

1.2 “What Should I Do?”

A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me to help him think through how to grow his business.He had successfully operated a small boutique professional services firm for several years at thatpoint, but he was concerned about the demands on his personal time, ability to save for retirementand his children’s education, and just a sense that things were getting stale. Maybe he needed a newstrategy, he thought. As we discussed his current situation, he expressed the following concerns:

• It’s difficult to scale my company’s growth.• It’s hard to find and keep the right people.• My personal interest in creating a business are not yet realized.• How can my company establish a means to generate ongoing revenue and equity value?• How can my company make a much bigger and positive lasting effect on clients?

Once we clarified those concerns, we restated them as a strategic question.

“How can we facilitate our clients’ business development activity for maximum profitin such a way that our clients enjoy the way they create business, we track our clients’evolution of needs, and our services become a ‘must-have’ habit in order for mycompany to grow a profitable, sustainable, and scalable business that I enjoy?”

“But how do I get there, Rob? What should I do? There are still so many decision to make. I keepthinking about the risks and benefits of each, but I don’t quite know how to handle the complexityof all their possible interactions.”

Usually, my clients face the very important issue of not really knowing what they want to achieve bymaking decisions, but in this case my friend knew his objectives fairly well. Where he was gettingmired down was in conceiving effective ways to coordinate multiple decisions to achieve thoseobjectives.

INTRODUCTION 2

1.3 Why You Need This Tutorial

When we make decisions, we usually speak of choosing among a known set of options, a choicebetween a This or a That. We may think about choosing between

• Vanilla ice cream or chocolate or the new wasabi cream flavor• Pirelli tires or Michelin or Goodyear• A vacation in the Bahamas or one in Las Vegas

If the options are not mutually exclusive, we may even talk about choosing between a This, a That,or some of This and some of That. These are the simpler decisions in life. Even if they are notroutine, their consequences are usually limited in scope and magnitude. We usually address thesedecisions by weighing in our mind the net effect of the relative pros and cons of each choice withoutgenerally worrying that the consequences will be beyond our ability to handle them should they turnout contrary to our preferences, even significantly so. If you do choose the wasabi cream flavoredice cream and it’s just awful (as I can assure you that it actually was), it’s not an outcome you willregret the rest of your life. You’ll gag a little and be a few dollars poorer—no big deal.

However, whenwe find ourselves facing complex personal or business situations, we very rarely findourselves limited to the choices within the scope of a single decision category. Instead, we usuallyfind ourselves thinking about the consequences of choosing among multiple coordinated optionsacross multiple decision categories. The number of potential decision options we can choose fromcan lead to an overwhelming, swarming beehive of what-ifs in our minds.

For example, consider that you are a key decision maker within a company that develops biomedicaldevices. Choosing whether or not to launch a new product does not usually have a simple Go orNo Go set of options. For a new product launch, you might have to think through the combinedeffects of choices about a new product’s geographic distribution, pricing level, product configuration,packaging, staging, specific disease application, etc. Each choice within a decision set generates aset of implied consequences that, as a responsible decision maker, you ought to consider to thesatisfaction of your fiduciary responsibilities. While the associated economic analysis will representenough complexity of its own¹, more immediately you might face some degree of confusion aboutwhich decision scenarios you should even consider. You will probably not have time to consider allof them.

Just among the decision categories listed in the biomedical device situation above, there existhundreds, if not thousands, of possible decision scenarios worth considering. What if each of the sixcategories contained three options? The decision makers would face 36 combinations (3x3x3x3x3x3)or 729 scenarios in their analysis. What decision makers face is choice complexity, which is asignificant contributor to two common decision failures: “analysis paralysis” and “shooting fromthe hip.”

¹Business Case Analysis with R provides a tutorial for modeling and communicating the complexities of business decisions under risk anduncertainty.

INTRODUCTION 3

Some decision-makers forge ahead believing they ought to and can conquer the complexity bytesting every possible scenario. However, as both the number of decision sets increase or the numberof options increase, the number of testable scenarios can approach the number of atoms in theuniverse! Clearly, no one will ever commit to a decision while there is always one more scenario totest in this case. (I’m convinced that many people actually use analysis paralysis to avoid makingdecisions as a CYA approach to managing their own career risk.) In the end, if anything ever getsdone, it’s usually too late to take advantage of the best part of the available value the opportunityprovides.

Unfortunately, other decision makers opt to “shoot from the hip” as they assume that their gut is abetter guide than the looming detailed analysis. Selective bias convinces them that their intuitionis usually right (Isn’t that what everyone thinks Blink! taught us?), or they reason that committingnow and fixing things later (regardless of what the unforeseen costs might be) is at least movement,and movement is valuable for its own sake – until the bill for the unforeseen costs or unintendedconsequences comes due.

Is there a reasonable way to tame the choice complexity that you face as a decisionmaker in your realworld, complex decision situations? There is by using three simple integrated thinking tools called aDecision Hierarchy, a Strategy Table, and a Strategy Rationale Table. You should consider usingthese tools when…

1. You experience a sense of being stuck about how to generate creative alternatives.2. You lack a reasonable number of decision scenarios with clearly understood descriptions that

are not immediately recognized as worthy of consideration by key stakeholders, resulting ina general confusion about what to do.

3. You face a number of decision categories, each with two or more sub-options, such thatyou could reasonably combine the sub-options into a broad array of decision scenarios. Thescenarios present the potential for a broad spectrum of resultant value.

Before you use these tools, you should be aware of its limitations. It will not tell you what to do orhow to choose. It’s only purpose is to help you create choices when you are stuck and feel as if youlack the creativity to do so with your own acumen. However, after some practice and repeated use,you will be surprised at how creative it allows you to be with the information you have at hand. Youwill come to see that the seeds of a problem solution usually lie within the definition of the problemitself. The three tools taken together will help you define and frame the problems or opportunitiesyou face with greater clarity and creativity.

1.4 The Full Scope of Effective Decision-Making

“Alice came to a fork in the road. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do youwant to go?’ responded the Cheshire Cat. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ saidthe Cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

INTRODUCTION 4

Before I go further, I want to be clear about the value of this tutorial. It serves most effectivelywithin a broader, more comprehensive framework for executive decision-making. For such decision-making to demonstrate the principles of a quality system, certain key questions need to be answeredaccording to a process that refines and clarifies important information to those held accountable formaking decisions prior to the commitment of resources that are intended to resolve the problem orcapture the value associated with an opportunity.

The flow chart above demonstrates a cartoon version of the process with many of the key questionsassociated with each phase of clarification and refinement. We understand the process to be acollaborative and open ended effort within a commitment to make decisions in the best interestsof the stakeholders that the decision makers have been entrusted to represent. When the leaders ofan organization adopt and incorporate this quality process into their managerial decision-makingactivities, they can reasonably certify with specific warranties that they have met their fiduciaryduty of care².

²Howard, Ronald A. “Heathens, Heretics, and Cults”. Interfaces 22:6. November-December 1992. pp. 15-27.

INTRODUCTION 5

From the perspective of a full decision management process, this tutorial will help you satisfy asmall slice of the process and warranties described above, namely:

• Framing: “What are the decision boundaries and open decisions?”• Warranty of Thoroughly Considered Consequences: “A creative set of alternatives areconsidered.”

1.5 Definitions

Throughout this tutorial, we will use several terms that are colloquially interchangeable. To facilitateclear communication here, we will use the following words with these stricter meanings.

1. Decision: An irrevocable allocation of a resource. A decision is not merely amental dispositionabout what you might do. It represents an actual commitment to use of time, energy, money,or personnel.

INTRODUCTION 6

2. Decision type: A classification for whether a decision is policy (foregone), strategic (open forconsideration), or tactical (deferred). We will discuss this more in the section on using thedecision hierarchy.

3. Decision hierarchy: The set of decisions available for consideration in the context of the givenproblem or opportunity, each element of which has been assigned to their appropriate decisiontypes.

4. Strategic (or Open) decision set: A decision that is being considered in the current analysisthat may contain several sub-choices. The kind of dessert one might consider prior to dinnercould be thought of as an open decision.

5. Option: one of the mutually exclusive choices available within a given strategic, or open,decision. Blueberry cobbler, apple cheesecake, or Boston cream pie might represent theavailable options in the open “dessert decision.”

6. Decision strategy: A complex decision is one in which multiple open decision sets areconsidered in a coordinated manner under the effects of uncertainty. The set of selectionsof given options within each of the open decisions under consideration represents a decisionstrategy. For example, thinking about a dinner decision strategy might include the followingopen decisions: drink, salad, meat, vegetable, dessert. The drink options might be drink{water,wine, iced tea, Coca-Cola}. The salad might be salad{Waldorf, carrot and raisin, icebergwedge}; meat{beef, bbq pork, salmon}; vegetable{green beans, sweet potatoes, boiled radishes};dessert{blueberry cobbler, apple cheesecake, or Boston cream pie}. A decision strategy is basedon the selection of one option from each open decision. The effects of uncertainty on a givendinner decision strategy might be how much you will enjoy the combined tastes of the foodafter their preparation, whether or not you will experience heartburn, or the level you willincrease your blood sugar or contribute to your continued elevated cholesterol. Some peoplerefer to a decision strategy as a decision scenario.

1.6 Complementary Resource: Integrated DecisionHierarchy and Strategy Table Template

To follow this discussion more effectively and to provide you with a template that you can usein your own organization, I have provided the three tools in an integrated Excel workbook that Ideveloped and use in my own client engagements. You will be able to download that file at thebeginning of the next chapter.