Why Synergy Matters for Complex Decisions with Uncertainty
The inner circle must approve when the stakes are high
Forget about individual personality styles of the audience in your communications. It is the group behavior that matters when communicating for decisions with high degrees of complexity and uncertainty.
From a practical standpoint, most organizations require passing information through the chain of command and, as such, the information must be passed through several internal audiences. An even more fundamental reason is that we want complex problems to be deliberated by a group.
Author and researcher Paul Schoemaker has observed that beyond compelling social reasons for group cooperation, it is clear that individuals simply have too many information processing biases and physical limitations to solve certain types of problems. We simply cannot avoid the reality that involving a cross-functional group of experts is the best way to ensure quality decision making. Maybe less obviously, reinforcement through group involvement is also very important to most individual decision makers when coping with uncertainty and complexity.
A Hard Time Making Decisions
There are many opinions on why people have a hard time making decisions. Researchers cite several dozen reasons for difficulty making decisions. Most of which are made worse by stress, anxiety, depression, or some form of mental anguish. In practice, these range from not having enough good alternatives to simply not caring about the decision. Not surprising, there is even a mental disorder for indecision called Aboulomania.
Having a hard time making higher-level, complex decisions comes down to two things. The first thing is that most decision makers spend years climbing through the operational ranks. In the operational ranks, decisions are fast and instinctive. Many decisions are required every day just to maintain a productive operation. Most of these decisions usually require the allocation of small amounts of resources
Higher-level, complex decisions have significant financial costs and impact many people. These decisions are dependent of various types of technical information to better evaluate complexity and uncertainty. A single decision should take weeks or months to make. The decision maker is subconsciously uncomfortable because of the time required to make decision.
The second reason for people having a hard time making decisions is that the subsequent feeling of guilt if the action taken adversely impacts someone. As humans, we prefer inaction to action if the action ultimately creates pain to another human being or to ourselves. We somehow feel less responsibility and less guilt by our inaction.
If the ‘push’ is the need to make decisions expeditiously and the ‘pull’ is to do no harm, then most individuals seek support and reinforcement when making decisions with potentially big impacts. Subject matter expertise may be part of the group formula, but it is usually a secondary aspect. From a communications perspective, understand that support and reinforcement is the key. Tapping key advisor support is often the difference in being effective.
There are many group effects just as there are many individual biases. Two common group effects from business are provided here.
Group Effects — Loyalty
One example of a group effect is from Herbert Simon related to group and organizational loyalty. Simon observes that the values and objectives that guide individual decisions in organizations are largely the organizational values and objectives. It does not really matter whether these are expressed or implied. Initially, these are usually imposed by the exercise of authority on the individual. However, the values and objectives gradually become internalized and are incorporated into the psychology and attitudes of the individual participant. In other words, the individual becomes conditioned and in turn acquires loyalty to the organization that automatically guarantees that his decisions will be consistent with the organization values and objectives.
This conditioned loyalty becomes a hurdle for effective communications and decision making related to complex problems with uncertainty. On one hand, it assures protection of the organization from outside forces. On the other hand, it is one reason why change is hard and good decisions related to complex problems under uncertainty is so difficult.
Group Effects — Planning Fallacy
A group effect from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky is called the Planning Fallacy. The Planning Fallacy is used to describe the plans, forecasts, and decisions made by groups that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios and that can be improved by reviewing statistics of similar cases. The simple example in practice is despite the technical recommendations provided to the group, a project has a budget, schedule, and quality of deliverables that exceeds what has ever been previously delivered. In other words, the group ignores the data and expert opinion and talks themselves into an overly optimistic and unachievable plan. It happens more often than not in all types of group settings.
The takeaway from these two examples of the negative impacts of the group on decision making is the recognition that the group effect is a powerful inside force that is difficult to overcome in communication.
Addressing Group Effects
Remember first and foremast that you get one shot at credibility. Avoid catering your report or presentation to the preferences of one audience. For decisions with high degrees of complexity and uncertainty, your material will pass through several levels or gates for ultimate approval.
A second recommendation is to use all of the resources in the decision makers network. Avoid having too much pride that leads to the conclusion that you must deliver the information to the decision maker. As a trusted advisor, the primary responsibility is to make sure the decision maker makes a good decision. Use someone else on the team to present the information if that will resonate most with the decision maker. Use someone in the decision maker’s inner circle to deliver the message informally if that is most effective. There is nothing that binds the communication to a one-on-one ‘grand reveal’ from the lead advisor to the ultimate decision maker.
A third recommendation is to use a Dialogue Decision Process, or DDP (Carl Spetzler, et al, 2007). In contrast to a ‘advocacy process’ where the decision maker is confronted with the best answer at the end, DDP moves decision makers toward a quality decision through a dialog with the decision team around specified staged deliverables. The effort to get the decision maker and their inner circle involved throughout the process is worth the effort.
Summary
Reinforcement through group involvement is very important to most individual decision makers when coping with uncertainty and complexity. Re-focus your approach to address group effects first and individual behaviors second. Three good starting points are to share consistent information throughout the process, embrace others to deliver the message if it will be better received by the decision maker, and actively engage your decision maker throughout the process.
