“Life is Sum of All Your Choices’, Albert Camus
What a quote to start a lecture on data decision science and artificial intelligence with. It is the one that by Yu-wang Chen Professor in Decision Sciences and Business Analytics at Alliance Business School chose for the lecture I attended.
It’s a quote worth sitting with.
I tend to think it is more about the decisions we make with the choices we have available to us. Rather than it being about the sum of our choices. The sum of the decisions we made with the choices.
We are here today in an increasingly unequal world. One where don’t all have the same resources, opportunities or circumstances informing the choices that present themselves to us.
We do all have the same ability to process to how we make decisions. How we understand the self, our decisions making processes and what guides it.
How we show up to those decision points is what makes the difference to the trajectory of our business, our teams, and our futures. Especially the difficult, uncomfortable, and potentially transformative ones.
How Do We Make Courageous Decisions?
A question I explore daily with leaders, entrepreneurs, teams and individuals.
What are the questions we need to ask ourselves when we need to assess our choices and make a decision in the face of uncertainty and risk? So here are some and I invite you to add any you find useful too.
What questions do we need to ask ourselves, to assess our choices and make a decision?
In Be Braver, we frame decision making by starting with Clarity. Looking at our vision and values, what we are wanting to move towards. We explore self awareness. How our competencies and self belief, self efficacy is affecting our evaluation and thinking. We examine what we know of Confidence.
Connection. To the sources of data we have available to and what that tells us. Courage to model and understand any bias we have in our thinking and fears we may have. At a primary level with respect to the outward cost or gain, but secondary at the level of our own personal loss of gain. How does the personal cost or threat affect our decision-making?
The inter-related combination of these factors influences whether we will move towards or away from decisions. Will frame how we assess the losses or the gains.
Last nights lecture explored a focus on decision-centric data and analytics. Data which informs the decisions we make in businesses, as teams and leaders. I was curious to understand the points of connection and departure with human decision making. And because I am a secret data geek.
I work with human data. The information we can extract from each other, in teams and from the information our bodies, hearts and minds deliver to us. Not dissimilar to computer programmes, we too are susceptible to biases that we need to seek to mitigate when we make decisions.
Real world decision making problems are usually characterised by multiple criteria and associated with uncertainty. There is certainly more of that on the horizon for us all.
HOW DO WE BEGIN?
How do we do it? In the face of uncertainty and risk?
We make sure we have clarity, confidence, connection and courage. We start with the end in mind, make sure we have the best data we can from which to make our decisions. In its many varied forms. We collaborate, we are curious, we explore.
We understand that not making a decision is a decision that also carries risk. Subjective decisions, moral and ethical? How do we make those decisions?
We recognise that we are wired to want to avoid pain and discomfort but that is sometimes the risk or the path we have to take. For an uncertain outcome. That in the end, may not get us the outcome we have hoped for, but if the right one, moves us further forward than where we were none the less.
What Questions Do We Ask?
This is not an exhaustive list. They are only some of the questions we might ask when practicing a Be Braver Mindset.
I hope you find one or two here you’ve not considered before that helps nudge you a little further forward.
Clarity
Vision
What is the decision you need to address?
What are the choices you have available to you?
What would be a desirable alternative?
Authenticity & Values
How does this relate to the person you are becoming
What perspectives do your values bring to the decision?
Confidence
Expertise & Experience
What skills and experience do you have to bring to the situation?
What knowledge do others have?
What do you not know?
Beliefs
What beliefs about yourself are limiting or driving your assessment?
How do your beliefs about others inform your evaluation?
What is within your control? What is outside of your control
Connection
Roles & Resources
What external data sources do you have to draw upon?
Are they reliable and credible sources?
Who are the voices that are invested or affected by the decision?
How are they influencing or impacted by the decision?
Emotion
What is your emotional data telling you?
About the self and about others?
Courage
Risk
What are your fears?
What are the external threats, losses and gains at stake in NOT making a decision?
What are the external losses and gains at stake in decisions.
What are the personal internal threats, losses or gains you perceive in in NOT making a decision?
What are the personal internal threats, losses or gains you perceive in decisions?
Resilience
What can you do to mitigate an undesirable outcome?
What needs to be in place to manage the possible impacts?
What has past experience of resilience show you?
What would you add? If we did want to build an exhaustive list?