Making Informed Decisions in an Over-Informed World

By Kim Faulkner 10 Jun 2011

In a world flooded with information and data – news, innovations, business, entertainment, trends… the topics are as endless  as the information about them – how does one sift through this deluge to make an informed decision?

Making an informed decision has come to mean sifting through as much information as possible before deciding on a course of action. Yet, I am not convinced that by doing this, we are making better decisions in the business, social or environmental arena than we did before all this data was available to us.

 I have been reading articles on Design Thinking, listened to a short lecture, looked at examples of why this is a good way of developing strategy and processes, and have a confession to make – I just don’t get it.

Maybe because “Design Thinking” seems to suggest a methodology that is new and revolutionary, and I struggle to see what’s new about it. Perhaps it is the applying the creative development process that designers adopt, into business thinking and decision making that makes it appear unique to some.

Yet, this is an approach that in some ways is very “old school”. Think about all the major decisions people make about their lives; be it which university to go to; who you would marry; where you would live…and so on. These are all fairly major personal decisions and in some cases, ones that could change the course of your life.

What were the steps we took to make these decisions? Did we follow a structured process?  Break them down into manageable bite-sized chunks so we don’t seize up with fear at the thought of making one false but fatal step?

At Activiste, we have adopted the S.T.A.R.T approach to solving business, organizational and brand problems. SENSE, THINK, ACT, RESOLVE, TELL. I am not going to delve into all the other areas of this approach here, because I think the first one, SENSE, is probably the least appreciated aspect of the approach, and yet one of the most fundamental starting points for any problem solving endeavour.

SENSE

If you reflect on the important decisions you’ve taken whether in business or in the personal arena, the first thing you did was USE YOUR INTUITION. Yet in a world where so much information is available to those who seek it, we increasingly distrust our instincts. We forget to ask ourselves intuition based questions like:

“Does it feel right? Can this work? Is this where I really want to be? Do I love him/her?”

It’s amazing the amount of processing that needs to be done in order to respond to those sorts of questions, but making an informed decision doesn’t start with getting a huge amount of data and information. Yet in the world of business, we are told that “data rules”. Well, it doesn’t. If you don’t get the right information, all it does is distract you from what really matters.

Finding out “What really matters” starts with working out how you feel about the situation – what your gut is telling you.

You rely on your intuition and your sense of what is going on to determine all these things. You do this through simple observation and the “lived experience”.  Through your five senses you actually take in more information than you realize. You glean information first hand about how people behave, what they’re saying, how they respond, through observation.

In Design Thinking I guess this would be the exploratory phase, where you would walk the site to see what it feels like, and get a sense of the place and what is needed. Whilst there, you would probably also get a sense of the issues and what needs to be done by talking to the owners/ clients; maybe observing how customers are being served or not, as the case may be. Sometimes even “walking in the shoes of the customer” by seeing for yourself what it feels like as a “mystery shopper”. Or even drawing from your own personal experience as a user…

The Post-It Note was created by a 3M employee who also happened to be the conductor of a church choir. As he picked the hymns they would be singing, he marked the pages with bits of torn paper. More often than not, as he turned the pages of the hymnal, the paper bookmarks would fall out.

He later went on to invent stickers with glue which didn’t stick permanently and presented the idea to his bosses, who thought it good enough to put through research.  Respondents in the study rejected the “ludicrous” idea of having sticky paper which didn’t stick permanently.  “What was the point of this?”

Fortunately for 3M, they went with the gut instinct of its employee who created something based on a real, experienced need, and instinct triumphed over data.

Translated into the business world and strategy development, sensing what is going on and what needs to be addressed,  would be gleaned from the stakeholder interviews (“talking to people”), and reviewing the operational environment (“looking around”),  observing organizational behaviour (“watching what they do”) – the “things” that perhaps are not formally articulated or documented but are nevertheless present and prescient.

Only after this stage of ‘sensing’, can you really know what you don’t know, and then seeking out the information you need to make that informed decision becomes a lot clearer. In many cases, you are better able to determine then how you should go about getting that information – whether through market research; or seeking expert advice.

At Activiste, the SENSE phase of the work is always undertaken by senior management because of the importance we place on acute observation and through it, the diagnostics. Observation, sensing, intuition, are the starting points of making good decisions.

I guess the old adage “Look before you Leap” is well worth heeding.