WRAP Up Your Decisions

Key words:  Decision making

Article length:  about 1100 words

or about 2 pages

WRAP Up Your Decisions

                Decision science is a popular area of study in business schools.  At least a beginning level course in decision science is required; thus, there’s no deciding whether to take it or not— and that’s probably a good thing, for how is one to decide properly before having the course about decision making?   Despite its leaning toward the mathematical (and sometimes I believe business and social sciences scheme up excess math involvement just to appear more “scientific”), the art and science of how we make decisions is fascinating.  Two business professors—who are also brothers, one on the East Coast and one on the West--Chip and Dan Heath recently published Decisive:  How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work.  An easy-to-read summation of their research, the work boils it all down to a useful everyday formula approach.

                Their formula is W.R.A.P., and its arrival could not have come at a better time for me as I recommend to my association board the options in shaping our new strategic plan.  Not to mention the chaperoning of my teenage kids with their decisions on courses, colleges and the like.   “We are nothing but the summation of our choices,” the adage goes, and it’s good to have some tool other than just listing pros and cons on the back of an envelope or plucking flower petals for “she loves me, she loves me not.”

                The W in the WRAP formula stands for Widen the options.  That is, decisions we regard as “whether or not” are, well, often not whether or not.  Can the decision be reframed as X AND Y instead of X or Y?  If there are many options, keep them all open until an obvious point of elimination.  Too often we get into a false dilemma of get product X for cheap or get product Y for expensive, without considering other alternatives. This is where opportunity costs come in:  in other words, buying product Y involves how much opportunity we miss with the extra cost we have to pay.   I have used this one with my kids, “Dad, why don’t you buy a new car?  The new Jaguars are really cool and would look a lot better than your old Civic.”   My answer, “the opportunity cost—or the foregone savings—would be at least a year of college tuition for a certain student we all know and love,” end of conversation. 

                Another way of widening the options is to find someone who’s already solved the problem.  This is where associations, and in my case ASAE and GSAE, come in.  Talk to a trusted colleague who’s solved a similar problem.  They may relate options you’ve not yet thought of.  We are all subject to confirmation bias; that is, running around looking for an isolated example which confirms our way of thinking—example:  because this is a really cold winter, there can’t be such a thing as global warming.  Find a way to look for and ask disconfirming questions about your hunches.  Because there’s an example of one person playing a single number on the roulette wheel and winning, doe not mean that’s a good strategy for choosing. 

                The Heath brothers talk about “laddering up” on a decision to find more options.  If the question is how best to arrange lines and food stations at a reception, the bottom rung of a decision ladder would be granular, say to put food on both sides of the table (doubling the number of lines); the next rung up is to recall the data from last year, which arrangements worked well; and the next rung up is to look and see what other groups do; and another rung higher is to look at an analogous situation of how does a store arrange its counters, and so on.  Suffice it to say, the odds of making the best decision (in a given amount of time) are directly proportional to the number of options considered. 

                The R stands for Reality check.  Here we look for the likelihood of a particular outcome.  Also, the concept of testing a particular decision: is there a way to run a small experiment to see what the outcome will be instead of just guessing?   The authors here seem to go out of their way not to use any math, where some minor math with decision trees and the like tends to be useful.  The authors bring in the useful method of considering the opposite for a course of action which seems to be based solely on the boss’s “gut”.  Ask, what would have to be true for such an option to be the very best choice?  If the truth assumptions are too “out there” then the presumed path is not so wise. 

                Here also is where questioning data becomes important.  When I present survey results to a Board, I do it in two parts:  first, the data (usually some sort of Likert scale—the respondents rated this feature 4.5 on a scale of 5), and the data alone without any respondents’ comments.  Just the data within their qualifying limits.  Then, later, we examine any open-ended comments for insight and suggestions.  This is to combat the tendency of some to go to the comments first, seeking sensationalism or feeding confirmation bias.  Comments may distract from or even overshadow the data even if the data may be overwhelming in their indication. 

                The A is for Attaining distance from the decision.  Most of this is about removing short-term emotion from decision making, defeating the impulse buy.  One technique the authors point out is asking 10/10/10.  How will the decision feel in 10 minutes, in 10 months, in 10 years?   This is a way of asking the timeless questions about mission fulfillment—a way to view the decision down the road:  what would our successors do?  Here, we attain distance from short-term emotions but get closer to longer payoff emotions about the future and what we regard as of ultimate importance.  Although not mentioned by the Heaths, my take here is that the attaining some vertical distance (i.e., a higher view to keep things in perspective) should also be part of the Attaining distance methodology. 

                The P stands for Prepare to be wrong.  In other words, what happens if we make the wrong decision?  Important to minimizing the damage, according to the authors, is to set “tripwires” such as we will allocate x amount of money and y amount of time to the project, and then fish or cut bait.  The Heath brothers treatment of decision making confirmed a tripwire I set long ago in reading business literature:  I give any book 100 pages, and if it’s a good read at that point I keep going.  

                I can’t do justice to the examples and the creative style by which the authors brought Decisive:  How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work to be a meaningful approach to decision making on many levels.  It was a good read at my tripwire of page 100, and I’m glad I decided to read all 300 pages.  It’s an easy decision to recommend.  

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