FLIP SESSION RESOURCE PAGE

Session T15: Decision Analysis to Improve, Make, or Break Decisions

2. Free Falling

When neglected, decision analysis can become less analytical and more of an exercise in organizational politics. As observed by Garvin and Roberto (2015), there are many negatives organizational consequences when DA is less characterized by critical thinking and more by persuasion and lobbying. Outcomes gravitate away from a systems approach striving for collective ownership of problem solving and potential win-win solutions toward a binary output of winners and losers:



Bias can also act as a barrier to decision analysis. As noted by Jesse Richardson, author of the website Your Bias Is, "cognitive bias means there’s a kind of misfiring going on causing us to lose objectivity." You can view several commonly encountered bias in the interaction below:



Bottom line:
There are internal and external barriers to making structured decisions. Quality practitioners should seek to rise above these barriers in order to realize goals.