Decision Making 2.0

Decisions are intermediate steps between thought and action. They are the precursors to behavior, or the expression of ideas into their active consequences in the world. For organizations, decision-making is nothing less than the interface between intent and capability.

This site is dedicated to the exploration of better decision making in organizations. It is a complement to www.ProblemSolving2.com, which is a separate treatment of organizational problem solving.

Most decision making in today's organizations is under a classic model, let's call it Decision Making 1.0. This model is a set of tools for helping groups work together. It includes tools for encouraging creativity, managing differences of opinion, exploring options, making tough choices, cultivating consensus, and the like. It is wrapped around a linear, rational model of sorting out options. It is a good start, and we need something much stronger.

Decision Making 2.0 is about acknowledging the variety and sublety of decision-making forums and the different decision-making models that might be applied in those settings. Perhaps more important, it is about admitting to the various processes that are precursors to decision making.

This site will present a set of key conceptual distinctions that enable more precise consideration of decision-making challenges. Using these distinctions, you should be able to more quickly discern the special challenges that lurk in any decision situations. It is targeted toward organizational decision-making, but the material is undoubtedly more broadly applicable.

Before decision-making comes into play, there are a variety of meta-decision making processes that have a profound but typically invisible impact on the quality of our decision making. The second set of distinctions defines a way to think about the different content in any decision. Next we catalog the various challenges that make decision making difficult. The fourth set of distinctions define the different forums in which decision-making takes place. Lastly, we provide a checklist of the key questions that support higher quality decision making.