Decision Making at 15 500 miles an hour (7.66km per second)

A key part of a leader’s’s role is decision-making. The previously unimagined conditions of the pandemic have challenged leaders to make difficult decisions at speed, while in new and uncomfortable conditions. 

David Cameron described being PM as feeling like standing in the path of a hurricane every day and other people talk about feeling they are being deluged with data with the volume and force of a firehose. 

These are challenging times to be making decisions. There is the ever-present risk and fear of the consequences of a wrong decision - heightened by the pandemic.  

Limits to logic

In normal times, businesses would take a logical, considered approach, perhaps listing a minimum of three alternatives and weighing the pros and cons of each. 

This logical approach is challenged by working under VUCA conditions. You’re assembling the information you need and running your analysis while that information is simultaneously changing.

All eyes on you

Running pros and cons analysis is tough when the capacity to process alternatives is challenged, not to mention the emotional and mental load  of making decisions while stood on a burning deck, feeling the heat rising and all eyes on you as leader.  

It’s a hard spot to be in, potentially feeling vulnerable and having no better insight than anyone else, but feeling that, as the leader, you must have an answer. I’ve heard that many times from the leaders I coach. It’s so easy to be trapped by your expectations, and one of the biggest things I can do is help leaders unpick that and find ways to cope, by supporting them to build and maintain their Resilience.

Cognitive strain

It’s well known from many studies that decision-making under stress hampers performance. Taking a penalty is essentially a simple task, but how often do players miss them? Top performing athletes often focus on process over results, and have a firm performance checklist as a way to lessen the cognitive effort and emphasise the process. 

Leaders can create a similar checklist, to guide your thinking and lessen the strain. 

Checklists can be limiting though if they prescribe a rigid sequence of steps. I don’t know if you remember the scene in the film “Butch Cassidy and Sun Dance Kid” where they try to rob a bank by checklist? It did not go well.  

In decision-making the checklist is there as a guide - first let’s think about x, now let’s think about y.

This is an approach that has been tried and tested in situations where lives are at stake and the consequences of failure are extreme…

How extreme? In outer space. 

The international space station orbits the earth at 7.66km a second and the astronauts are 400km above the earth. If things go wrong help is a long way off and if a decision is needed the stakes are as high as its possible to imagine. 

One of the ways they deal with this is by having a guide to their decision-making process. Not a guide that says what they have to do (first close valve A) but how they should think their way through a decision. 

This lessens the cognitive load, gives a shared awareness to bring people together and helps get (and keep) everyone on the same page . It gives leaders confidence to act by following the process and gives followers confidence in the process the leaders are following. 

Obviously, some decisions don’t need the checklist - if something is on fire then reach for the fire extinguisher, but often the problem is complex and unclear. Where the situation is less urgent than an actual fire, working through the process is invaluable, as it leads to a clearer and better considered decision.  

So, let’s look at an example decision-making guide checklist - BRAUNS, which is used for a disease management decision.

·       Benefits 

·       Risks

·       Alternatives

·       Unknowns

·       Nothing (as in ‘what if we did nothing’?)

·       Safety Net (a plan B if it doesn’t work)

Considering that astronauts and healthcare practitioners make life-or-death decisions on a frequent basis, they need to be confident their decision is right.

You may not be an astronaut yourself – perhaps you’re a marketing director, product developer, or running your own business– but the decisions you make will impact your organisation, and if it helps make working life easier for you, it’s worth developing a checklist that works for you. . 

Finally - all of the above works even better when you have built a good level of personal Resilience.