80% Of A Decision Is Information

Published: Jan 15, 2004

Application

You may have heard successful decision makers or artists refer to the "sweat factor" overwhelming the "inspiration factor."

Others reveal the key to their successful decisions was a result of subordinates skillful at gathering, collating and presenting good intelligence.

Dare we even mention the controversy over the Iraq invasion decision?

Top level decision makers often make decisions under uncertainty. This behooves us at the lower level to make a special effort to reduce uncertainty wherever possible.

Stories

Insulting the Elite

A friend used "Decision Making Under Uncertainty" as the title for his PhD dissertation.

He thought he could gain more attention from the CEO's of large multi-national corporations by enclosing a crisp Swiss Franc note in his cover letter to his questionnaire.

Some returned the note with the questionnaire with a ‘thank you' note for the amusing gesture. Some responded with a vitriolic rebuke for the insult. Most of these did not return the questionnaire.

Submitted by: Nephew Gerry

14 alternatives plus the key one

My students in Small Business Management classes were required to submit a paper where the Definition of the Problem section was followed by an exhaustive list of facts uncovered during the investigation of a real business situation. Preceding the final Recommended Solution was to be a list of alternative solutions.

The papers were returned if there were less than 14 unique solutions. Reasonable combinations were accepted. Also, the papers were returned for re-submission and marked, "Incomplete" if the list did not include the alternative, "Do Nothing."

This exercise produced some winners. Former students who have successful businesses often refer to this tough requirement as one of the keys to their success.