100 ways to improve judgement when certainty is unavailable
The decisions that matter most are rarely made with everything known.
There is usually missing information.
Competing priorities.
Different interpretations.
Time pressure.
Consequences that cannot be known with confidence.
And yet a decision still has to be made.
Deciding Wisely explores how organisations exercise judgement when certainty is unavailable.
Through 100 prompts, the third volume of the Intelligent Risk Series examines the conditions surrounding important decisions: what information matters, which assumptions are being relied upon, what alternatives have been considered, what trade-offs are being made and what might change the decision.
The objective is not to eliminate uncertainty from decision-making.
That is rarely possible.
Instead, the prompts encourage organisations to become more deliberate about how they decide in its presence.
They invite conversations about confidence, consequences, opportunity cost, timing, reversibility and the difference between a decision that appears defensible and one that genuinely reflects thoughtful judgement.
They also challenge a common organisational temptation: waiting for certainty that may never arrive.
Used individually or as part of a leadership, governance, project or strategic discussion, each prompt creates an opportunity to examine not simply what the organisation has decided, but how it arrived there.
Because decision quality cannot always be judged by outcome alone.
A good decision can produce a poor outcome.
A poor decision can occasionally produce a good one.
What matters is developing the organisational capability to make sound judgements repeatedly when outcomes remain uncertain.
Use this book to
- examine the assumptions behind important decisions;
- explore alternatives and opportunity costs;
- consider what information genuinely matters;
- distinguish confidence from certainty;
- improve the quality of decision conversations; and
- understand when enough is known to act.
The goal is not perfect decisions. It is better judgement when perfect information does not exist.