Skills-Based Learning is Better than Degree Based Learning

The @lantis Method is to promote Skills-Based Learning over Degree-Based Learning. This is because Skills-Based Learning is much easier to measure than degree-based learning. Additionally, Skills-Based Learning is more easily updated.

Harvard Business Schools conducted a Study – “The Emerging Degree Reset,” How the Shift to Skills-Based Hiring Holds the Keys to Growing the U.S. Workforce at a Time of Talent Shortage.

This study found Employers are resetting degree requirements in a wide range of roles, dropping the requirement for a bachelor’s degree in many middle-skill and even some higher-skill roles. Employers are now looking much more at Skills-Based learning.

This reverses a trend toward degree inflation in job postings going back to the Great Recession. And while the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this process, this reset began before the crisis and is likely to continue after it.

Some 46% of middle-skill and 31% of high-skill occupations experienced material degree resets between 2017 and 2019.
Only 27% of the changing occupations could be considered “cyclical resets,” or short-term responses to the pandemic. The majority (63%) appear to be “structural resets” that began before the pandemic, representing a measured and potentially permanent shift in hiring practices.
When employers drop degrees, they become more specific about skills in job postings, spelling out the soft skills that may have been assumed to come with a college education, such as writing, communication, and being detail-oriented.This reset could have major implications for how employers find talent and open up opportunities for the two-thirds of Americans without a college education. Based on these trends, we project that an additional 1.4 million jobs could open to workers without college degrees over the next five years.

History of Skills-Based Learning

Two decades ago, companies began adding degree requirements to job descriptions, even though the jobs themselves hadn’t changed. After the Great Recession, many organizations began trying to back away from those requirements.

Many companies are moving away from degree requirements and toward skills-based hiring, especially in middle-skill jobs, which is good for both workers and employers. It also puts pressure on Learning Centers to focus on Skills-based learning over just getting a degree.

Early in the 2000s, a significant number of employers began adding degree requirements to the descriptions of jobs that hadn’t previously required degrees, even though the jobs themselves hadn’t changed.

The trend — sometimes known as “degree inflation” — became particularly pronounced after the Great Recession of 2008-2009, at which point leaders in government, business, and community-based organizations recognized that a reset was in order. Many large corporations soon announced that they would eliminate degree requirements in much of their hiring.

A decade has now passed, and it seems time to ask: Have companies followed through? Has the degree-inflation tide turned? If so, what role, if any, has Covid-19 played in making that happen?

The HBS Report found employers are indeed resetting degree requirements in a wide variety of roles. The change is most noticeable for middle-skill positions — defined as those requiring some post-secondary education or training but less than a four-year degree. To a lesser extent, the change is also noticeable at some companies for higher-skill positions.

This recent reset has happened in two waves, both of which are ongoing. The first, a structural reset, began in 2017, at the outset of the 2017–2019 bull market for workers. The second, a cyclical reset, began in 2020, prompted in part by the Covid-19 pandemic. Let’s consider each in turn.

Structural reset toward Skills-Based Learning.

If demand for talent far outreaches supply, employers de-emphasize degrees. That became increasingly apparent during the tight employment market of the late 2010s. Between 2017 and 2019, employers reduced degree requirements for 46% of middle-skill positions and 31% of high-skill positions. Among the jobs most affected were those in IT and managerial occupations, which were hard to fill during that period.

The essence of the structural reset is this: In evaluating job applicants, employers are suspending the use of degree completion as a proxy and instead now favor hiring on the basis of demonstrated skills and competencies. This shift to skills-based hiring will open opportunities to a large population of potential employees who in recent years have often been excluded from consideration because of degree inflation.

Cyclical reset.

Desperate to find skilled workers during the pandemic, which has been the biggest health crisis of modern times, many employers have been willing, at least temporarily, to forgo degree requirements for many jobs.

In job announcements for intensive-care and critical-care nurses, for example, the share of postings asking for a bachelor’s degree declined by 12 percentage points between 2019 and 2020, from 35% to 23%. Degree requirements for registered nurses fell by a more modest 5 percentage points.

The shift may reflect only a temporary accommodation in the face of an emergency, which is why we consider it a cyclical rather than a structural reset, but nonetheless, given its scale, it’s likely to teach us a lot about whether workers who have degrees actually perform better than newly hired workers who do not. Previous research suggests that performance differences are often marginal outside specific fields such as professional services and finance.

Are degree requirements really going away?

Unfortunately, degree requirements will not go away.

There is a “built-in” institutional bias toward degree-based learning.

Each company HBS group studied had recently announced the elimination of degree requirements companywide. What they found, however, was that in practice they all continue to make higher than average demands for college degrees. Oracle, for example, requires degrees in well over 90% of the IT postings we sampled, including all of its network administrators. The national average is only 52%.

That said, they found marked differences in how often companies require a degree for IT positions, even when hiring for the same one. Consider the job of software quality-assurance engineer. Only 26% of Accenture’s postings for the position contained a degree requirement. Likewise, only 29% of IBM’s did. But the percentages were dramatically different at Oracle (100%), Intel (94%), HP (92%), and Apple (90%).

More broadly, by the end of 2021, Accenture and IBM had consistently distinguished themselves in their efforts to walk back degree inflation: At Accenture, only 43% of postings for IT jobs contained a degree requirement, and at IBM, only 29% did. Other major technology players who had made similar policy announcements accomplished much less. They found no change between 2017 and 2021, for example, in the share of postings requiring degrees for these same IT positions at Microsoft and Facebook — and the share increased substantially at Intel. They did find a significant change Apple and Google, but even so, more than 70% of their IT job postings still required a degree.

Given that technical, or “hard,” skills, can be easily confirmed through pre-employment testing, certification, and employment history, why are so many employers still requiring degrees?

Perhaps because they believe that college graduates possess more-refined social, or “soft,” skills — the ability to work in groups, say, or to communicate efficiently in real-time, or to prioritize tasks. These skills are far harder to assess, and its continued use strongly suggests that many employers are using college degrees as a proxy for them. Employers who eliminated degree requirements, frequently added more-detailed soft-skills requirements in their postings.

This makes perfect sense and provides an opportunity for 21st Century leaning networks to focus more on skills-based learning.

That’s notable. After reducing their reliance on degree-based hiring, these employers seem to be thinking more carefully about what capabilities they are truly looking for, and they’re describing them more explicitly — which, in turn, is making job applicants more aware that they need to develop soft skills, and is encouraging skills providers to consider how they can update their curricula to include those skills.

The benefits of fewer barriers.

The reset that’s taking place in hiring today is vitally important.

If we want to increase equity in the labor market, one important way to do it is by removing barriers to well-paying jobs — and there’s no question that in recent years one of those barriers has been inflated degree requirements.

All companies have different needs, of course, but as they write job descriptions and assess candidates they should carefully assess the value of the blunt and outdated instruments that they’ve been using, and the assumptions they’ve been making.

A successful reset will represent a win-win: Previously overlooked workers will be able to pursue attractive career pathways even without a four-year degree, and companies will be better able to fill jobs that need filling.

How to Make Your Own Luck

Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “The Outliers.” In it, he suggests that luck has a lot to do with success. Being at the right place at the right time is massively important.

Yes, personal characteristics–such as talent, skill, mental toughness, hard work, tenacity, optimism, growth mindset, and emotional intelligence– are important.

We tend to give out resources to those who have a past history of success, and tend to ignore those who have been unsuccessful, assuming that the most successful are also the most competent.

I’ve heard it said that Napoleon once asked, “is he lucky?” when asked to promote a General. I suspect Napoleon was thinking that successful people make their own luck.

a certain number of traits– including passion, perseverance, imagination, intellectual curiosity, and openness to experience– do significantly explain differences in success, however that is not all it takes.

In recent years, a number of studies and books–including those by risk analyst Nassim Taleb, investment strategist Michael Mauboussin, and economist Robert Frank— have suggested that luck and opportunity may play a far greater role than we ever realized, across a number of fields, including financial trading, business, sports, art, music, literature, and science.

Their argument is not that luck is everything; of course talent matters.

Instead, the data suggests that we miss out on a really important piece of the success picture if we only focus on personal characteristics in attempting to understand the determinants of success.

Consider some recent findings:

About half of the differences in income across people worldwide is explained by their country of residence and by the income distribution within that country,
Scientific impact is randomly distributed, with high productivity alone having a limited effect on the likelihood of high-impact work in a scientific career,
The chance of becoming a CEO is influenced by your name or month of birth,
The number of CEOs born in June and July is much smaller than the number of CEOs born in other months,
Those with last names earlier in the alphabet are more likely to receive tenure at top departments,
The display of middle initials increases positive evaluations of people’s intellectual capacities and achievements,
People with easy to pronounce names are judged more positively than those with difficult-to-pronounce names,
Females with masculine sounding names are more successful in legal careers.

The importance of the hidden dimension of luck raises an intriguing question: Are the most successful people mostly just the luckiest people in our society?

One of the interesting things they found was, talent was definitely not the unitary path to success because the most talented individuals were rarely the most successful.

In general, they found:

mediocre-but-lucky people were much more successful than more-talented-but-unlucky individuals. The most successful agents tended to be those who were only slightly above average in talent but with a lot of luck in their lives.

They found the most successful agents were very lucky people with about average levels of talent.

“[I]f the goal is to reward the most talented person (thus increasing their final level of success), it is much more convenient to distribute periodically (even small) equal amounts of capital to all individuals rather than to give a greater capital only to a small percentage of them, selected through their level of success – already reached – at the moment of the distribution.”

Luck and opportunity play an underappreciated role in determining the final level of individual success.

The important role of luck, which can emerge spontaneously throughout the creative process.

The researchers argue that the following factors are all important in giving people more chances of success:

a stimulating environment rich in opportunities
a good education
intensive training

Communication is a Team Sport

Communication is a Team Sport

I was watching the sports news and they showed a great play where the 3^rd baseman made a running barehanded catch, threw it to the first baseman, who in turn made a great catch by stretching out and short hopping the ball in the dirt. And it occurred to me that’s a lot like communication. Not only does someone have to send a message, but someone has to receive a message.

Communication is a team sport. And as in any team sport not only do the individual team members have to work on their own skills, they have to work on those skills together. It’s one thing to be able to throw the ball or catch the ball. It is another thing to be able to do this in harmony and synchronization with the other players on the team. Sports is about teamwork. And Communication is the same. Communication is a Team Sport!

The challenge with communication is that it’s common for people to be out of synch and in disharmony. When you go into a store to buy something, the sales clerk is on the store’s team, which means they have a different goal than you, which could cause disharmony. When you go to the mechanic to get your car fixed, the mechanic is on the repair shop’s team, not your team, which could put you out of synch. When you call the insurance company to make a claim, the insurance agent is on the insurance company’s team, not your team. Hopefully, you get my point.

Anyone who’s ever played a team sport, had a child on a team, or coached a team knows that communication can be the “most valuable player” for the team’s success.

Whether it’s coordinating team practices, canceling the game because of inclement weather, or organizing snacks between the team moms, it takes a lot of effort to communicate all the messages that need to be relayed so that everyone stays informed.

Other Relevant Lessons

Learning is not a spectator sport(Opens in a new browser tab)
Communication Skills To Teach(Opens in a new browser tab)
7 Communication Skills to Master(Opens in a new browser tab)

Visit Https://atlantisschoolofcommunication.org for more information on this.

How to Buy a Car

The Beginning: Buying a car.

I think buying a car is one way to talk about decision making, because obviously it is a large purchase and one that will have long term affects.

Each of us has a different decision making style. Some people make decisions quickly. Others make decisions slowly. Some people like to make decisions by themselves. Others like to make decisions collaboratively.

Some people seem to make good decisions all the time. Others not so much. Some people blame others when their decisions do not pan out. Others blame themselves no matter what the reason things didn’t work out.

A lot of people take decision making for granted. These people don’t think they need tools to help them. Others read everything they can on decision making so as to make sure they don’t make a bad decision.

I see decision making as a 5 step process:

Decide on the goal
Find the right information
Reach a decision based on the right information
Implement the decision.
Evaluate the decision to determine if it achieved the goal. Identify next steps. At a minimum one next step is to learn something.

I call this the TIDAL approach to decision making.

Target – Decide on the goal

Information – Find the right information

Decision – Reach a decision based on the information

Action – Implement the decision

Learning – Evaluate the decision to determine if it achieved the goal. Identify next steps. At a minimum one next step is to learn something.

While these steps seem obvious, it is surprising how few people actually follow them. For many bright successful people the most important factor in making decisions is expediency. Hence, decisions are often made on gut feelings based on personal past experiences. Instinct is often the most relied upon process. This often happens in buying a car. And I am sure this is where the advertisers want you go be.

Furthermore, there is rarely any learning after the decision was made. My experience is that the only time decisions are reviewed is if something goes wrong. And then, the review is focused on finding someone to blame.

There are three basic reasons why people don’t use a formal process to make decisions and as a result often get decisions wrong.

1. They believe there are time constraints where none actually exist. They rush to make a decision and they don’t look for all the information they could. They believe that our fast paced world demands fast decisions. They believe they don’t have time to evaluate information objectively. And they certainly believe they don’t have time to go back and review the decision after the fact.

2. They don’t want to look at facts that could challenge their core beliefs. Looking at information objectively and evaluating it honestly could force them to question some of their most dearly held paradigms. In general most people don’t like change. So they avoid information that might cause change. Further they may have a huge investments in a particular paradigm and thus don’t want to risk losing those investments.

3. They are more concerned with appearing decisive and in control than making good decisions.

When it comes to making decisions it seems that people simply react as best they can to the situation around them. They often use instinct, common sense, and guesswork. If they are lucky and they have some experience with the situation they might make a good decision. However, the likelihood of success is usually more a matter of good fortune than the result of the process itself. Thus, it is almost impossible to make good decisions in a consistent way and across the entire organization.

Put all these things together and we have a prescription for mass quantities of poor decisions.

The good news is that decision making can be improved by understanding how to make good decisions and implementing a formal process to help people learn to make better decisions. Yes, it will be hard for many that don’t want to change or don’t want to give up control. However, the benefits to both the individual and the organization far outweigh the costs.

Flexibility is the key

It is absolutely critical to note that while the TIDAL steps can be done in order – one step following the other, in most cases the steps SHOULD, be done concurrently. The TIDAL process should not be seen as a rigid process that must be followed sequentially, rather it should be seen as a checklist of things that must be done at some point in the process. For many, this will create tension. Their personality requires that any activity follow a strict recipe, formula, and guideline. For those individuals, deviation from the instructions could result in failure and hence must be avoided at all costs.

The problem with this linear approach to decision making is that it limits the ability to change course based on things learned by the process itself.

The best way to go through the TIDAL Approach is to jump back and forth between the steps. For example, a target could be set but during the information gathering stage the target could be changed because of the information gathered. Or as the target is being set, learning can take place which might force a change in target or a change in the information being gathered.

The actionable information from this discussion is that it is critical that people that demand order do not control the decision process. People have to be flexible and realize that things could change half or three quarters the way through a project.

Personal Decision Making Style

Each of us has a style. While not completely genetically hardwired like eye color or height, our decision making style does have a strong genetic component. Each of us come into the world with a predisposition for a particular decision making style. Of course our environment can influence our style, but that influence is limited to its impact. Stephan Poulter described our individual styles In his Book “The Father Factor” as,” a software program installed a long, long time ago that undergoes constant updating.”

It is important for all of us to understand our own style for two reasons; first, to know are our strengths and weaknesses; and second, to fix any problems we have.

Here are some examples of our decision process style:

Quick or Slow
Individual or collaborative
Analytical or intuitive
Systematic or not systematic
Rigid or Flexible
Absolutist (there is Always a right answer) or Relativist (any answer may work)
Ends justify the means or the ends never justifies the means
Never challenge authority or always challenge authority
There are right ways to do something based on some moral teachings or there are no right ways to do something. You should do whatever works.
Decisions are objective or decisions are subjective

Decision Making Universe

Decision making is like the layers of an onion

All decisions are layered one on top another. As soon as you peel back one layer by making a decision, there is a whole series of decisions underneath.

Think about it this way. What is the first decision you have to make in the day? It is to get out of bed or stay in bed. If you decide to go back to sleep, that will mean one set of subsequent decisions. If you decide to get up, that will mean another set of subsequent decisions. Some of those subsequent decisions will not change. For example, you will at some point have to decide what to wear, whether you decided to go back to sleep or not. No matter what you decide about sleeping longer you will still have to decide what to wear. Here is the complication; while your decision to sleep longer or not will not change the fact that you will eventually have to decide what to wear, you decision to sleep longer or not could influence what you actually wear. If you sleep until it gets warmer you might chose different clothes than if you got up when it was still cold out.

So as you are lying in bed trying to decide if you should get up or not you think about all the different ramifications of each decision. I am reminded of a song that goes like this; “Should I stay or should I go? If I stay there will be trouble. If I go there will be double.”

Think of a Chess match. Each move enjoins other moves. The point I am trying to make in terms of decision making is that some people play chess one move at a time. Others think many moves ahead. Common wisdom says that the most successful chess players think many moves ahead. It is hard to win in chess thinking only about the current decision. The same should be the case with our personal and business decisions. The people that think ahead have a better chance of making good decisions.

Going back to our sleeping example, I would say most of us have lain in bed in the morning and thought, perhaps I should just go back to sleep. But then we think that if we go back to sleep we will be late for work. And if I am late for work how can I keep my job? And if we can’t keep our job how can I feed my family. Or the decision process could go like this. If I sleep for 20 more minutes I might be late for work but since my boss will not be there today, that is ok. See where I am going with this.

Another key point here is the notion of making decisions “By the Book.” One way to manage the decision making process is to follow a documented set of procedures. Again going back to our sleeping example, perhaps you were raised that early to bed and early to rise was not negotiable. You were raised that you have to get up at 6 am every morning. You don’t question that rule. You just do it. That is the way you were taught and there is no reason to think beyond that decision.

The advantage of doing things “By the Book” is that it takes away the responsibility of decision making. Someone else has decided for you.

When to make a decision?

One of the most critical steps in decision making is the decision about when a decision should be made. Many bad decisions are made either because they are made too quickly or they are not made quickly enough.

So how does a decision maker know when is the right time to make a decision? The answer is simple. A decision should be made only when 1 of the following 2 conditions exist:

All information is received and processed.
There is no more time to wait and a decision must be made.

All information is received

It happens rarely but it is possible for a situation to exist that all the information available has been gathered and processed. This does not guarantee that a correct decision will be made. Selective perception, hidden agendas, or forces outside of the decision makers control, may result in a wrong decision. But gathering more information will not change anything.

A critical point here is before a decision is made the decision maker should have an idea of what information they need to make a good decision.

There is no more time to wait

Most often in business a decision has to be made before all the information can be collected and analyzed. In that case the time for a decision should arrive only when the result of a bad is decision is worse then the result of no decision.

Of course if you don’t have all the information it is likely that you will not know when that time arrives. However, there must be a conscious understanding of the ramifications of the decision.

The way to look at this is to weigh the lack of a decision against the probability of making a wrong decision. If the risk of making a wrong decision is low, and you believe you have enough information than go ahead and make the decision. If the risk of making a wrong decision is high then the decision must be put off until the last possible moment.

I see this as the biggest mistake decision makers make. I see that often in business the decision to make a decision is not related at all to the facts surrounding the decision. I have heard many decision makers say that it is best to appear decisive. Hence they make quick decisions, not because it is the right thing to do, but rather because it is the way they think they should act.

One of the most frequent arguments I hear in support of the decisive decision maker is that the alternative is analyzing things too much. This is called “analysis paralysis.” So in order to avoid analysis paralysis they over compensate and just make decisions for the sake of not appearing weak.

In many decisions it really does not matter what decision is chosen. We often hear this as “6 to one, half dozen to another.” Essentially we are saying there is no wrong decision. In this case a decision can be made at any time. I often use the example of going to the store for my wife to buy toilet paper. Absent specific instructions on what kind to buy, it really does not matter what kind I buy.

Who makes the decision

A key element of making a good decision is deciding who makes the decision.

In broad terms the decision maker can either be an individual or a group.

Group decision making takes longer but decisions made by the group tend to be better

Deciding who makes the decision is one of the most overlooked parts of decision making. The decision maker could be the highest ranking individual. It could be the Subject Matter Expert (SME). It could simply be the first person on the scene. Or it could be the individual delegated to make the decision.

Unfortunately, deciding who makes the decisions is rarely part of the decision process. But it should be.

Let’s take a look at a few of the people that should make decisions.

The Project Manager

Often times the decision maker is the manager. In this case the manager gets input from the staff and makes a decision. This often required mediation between the staff. If for example, different staff members are recommending different decisions, then it is up to the manager to mediate between the staff members and make a decision. It could require that the manager make a decision and then spend time trying to convince the staff member that did not have their decision chosen why they were wrong.

The Subject Matter Expert

Often we simply defer to the SME. When I go to the doctor or the mechanic I defer to their decisions. If the IT staff says that something has to be done a certain way we defer to them. They are the experts and we defer to the experts.

Consensus

In some cases we look to everyone to make a decision. Discussion is held until everyone can agree.

Majority

In some cases we vote and let the majority make the decision.

The First person on the Scene

There are some situations where we give the decision making authority to the first person on the scene. Police, Fire, or medical situations often use this approach.

The most senior team member on the scene

Again, this is often used with Police, Fire, military, or medical situations. When the most senior team member arrives they assume all decision making responsibilities.

The person most sure of the answer

There are situations where someone that is not the manager, not the most senior, not the first person on the scene, but never the less is sure of the answer. Perhaps they have seen the situation before. In any case, the bottom line is the person most sure of the decision should make the decision. But that person must take responsibility for making a bad decision.

An example would be useful here. My wife is a better cook than I. So when it comes to cooking I do not criticize her decisions. I know more about cars than her. So when it comes to fixing the car she does not criticize my decisions. This is not to say that I don’t tell her what I want to eat. And it does not say that she does not tell me what she wants in terms of the car. What this says is that there is a division of decision making based on who is most sure they know the answers.

This is about is taking responsibility for our actions. If I make a decision on the car and it is a wrong decision, then I have to take responsibility for making a wrong decision.

The highest ranking member on the scene

This is different than the most senior team member making the decision. Because it is possible that the highest ranking is not the most senior.

This is used very frequently and is by far the easiest.

How to make a decision

The 5 steps of decision making are:

Target
Information
Decision
Action
Learning

It is important that this not be a serial process. Steps 1 and 2 have to be worked together.

Step 1 – Deciding on the Target & Step 2 gathering information should be iterative. A target should be set and information should be gathered. However, it is possible that as information is gather the target might change.

The image here is water going down a drain. The water spirals downward in ever smaller circles. So to should the process of gathering information. This is based on the scientific approach where a hypothesis is made and then information is gathered on that hypothesis. Based on the information gathered the hypothesis is either changed or it extended.

The first step is deciding on the goal or target. Deciding on what is it you want to accomplish.

At first glance this might appear easy. However, in most decisions there are usually multiple targets. Therefore it is critical that a way be found to prioritize and weight the targets.

Let’s say you look at your gas gauge and notice you are almost out of gas. Now you have to make a decision – When and where to get gas. Following the TIDAL approach the first step is to decide on the Target or goal. One goal could be to get gas at the closest location. Another goal might be to get gas at the cheapest place. Another goal might be to get gas at a place where you could also get a lottery ticket. Or you might want to get gas at a place that has a good cup of coffee. It is possible that one gas station might meet all four targets. In that case the decision is easy. However, in most decisions no one answer hits all targets. Usually one gas station is the closest, while another is cheapest, another might have a good cup of coffee, and still another has the lottery ticket.

Thus we have to modify the goals with information. Let’s further expand our example of getting gas. Let’s say we gather all the information and decide to get gas at the gas station with the best coffee. Let’s further say that as you are driving to that gas station we hear on the radio that too much coffee is bad for you and you decide that you no longer want coffee. Now you have to change your decision. You see what happened. Even though you made a decision, you are still gathering information. You have the potential to change the decision up until the last moment before the decision is executed and implemented.

Step 1 – Setting Priorities

The answer you finally come up with could be different depending on which of your targets is the most important. Hence it is critical that priorities be set.

The way to deal with this situation is to list all the potential targets or goals. In our example of the need to make a decision to get gas, the goals are to get gas within the next 50 miles, save money, get a cup of coffee, and get a lottery ticket. Then once you have all the goals identified you figure out a way to characterize those goals.

There are many ways to do this. One way is to use the table below. Obviously the critical goals have to be addressed. And the Easy goals are just that Easy. I wish there is a way to teach people how to pick the right mix of goals. I think that is what sets successful decision makers apart.

Time frame
Importance
Difficulty making the right decision
Difficulty implementing

	Urgent	Not Urgent
Important	Get Gas	Save Money
Not Important	Get Coffee	Get Lottery Ticket

	Critical	Not Critical
Hard		Save Money
Easy	Get Gas Get Lottery ticket

There are two ways you can pick which is the right mix of goals. Have the team vote, or have one person pick. My suggestion is to have one person pick. That person should be the team leader.

The difficulty in correctly identifing the problem is the most significant obstacle to effective decision making. Unfortunately there is no simple way to overcome this obstacle.

There are millions of examples. And this is so very obvious. Yet it is often difficult to do because we are often trying to solve multiple problems at the same time.

Decisions can be made in a group, or individually. They can be made quickly or after careful study. If the decision is to be made by a group, the group can use a very formal method like voting or informal like discussion.

The situation should dictate what method is used.

One way to address this is to create a Consequences Table.

	Alternative 1	Alternative 2	Alternative N
Objective/Target 1	Consequence	Consequence	Consequence
Objective/Target 2	Consequence	Consequence	Consequence
Objective/Target N	Consequence	Consequence	Consequence

Step 2 – Gathering Information

This is actually a pretty easy step. The big risk is from distortions and biases.

Here you want to identify cause and effects. You want to distinguish between “Facts” and “Conclusions”. You can use observation, personal experience, expert advice, or empirical research. I just remind everyone that an important factor is decision making is understanding the difference between cause and effect and correlation.

Part of the information stage is looking past the actual decision to the implementation of the decision. Often times implementing a decision is more difficult than making the decision. For example, let’s take a decision to go to college. Making the decision to go to college is pretty easy. However, actually going to college and getting a degree is very hard.

What this means is that you have to look at how hard a specific decision might be to implement.

Step 3 – Making the decision and implementing that decision

While this is the most important step, it actually could be pretty easy given a good job with steps 1 and 2. Using the example of the gas station making the decision is hard part. Implementing the decision is the easy part. However, in most cases making the decision is the easy part, while implementing the decision is the hard part.

Learning after the decision

A critical element to decision making is to honestly evaluate the decision after the fact and learn from it. There are two broad learning’s: 1) the outcome could not have been better and nothing needs to change, or 2) the outcome could have been better and something needs to change.

If the learning is that everything went as expected and nothing needs to change than great! You can move on to the next decision with the confidence that you are doing what you need to do.

If, however, the learning is that the outcome could have been better then you should evaluate what could have been better and work to make it better.

Remember that you decision could have a positive outcome but still require changes.

Why there are bad decisions

Bad decisions come from “distortions and biases – a whole series of mental flaws – that sabotage our reasoning.” (HBR The Hidden Traps in Decision Making, John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa)

Anchoring – Giving disproportionate weight to the first information you receive.
Status quo – Favoring alternatives that perpetuate the existing situation
Sunk Costs – Making choices in a way that justifies past, flawed choices
Confirming evidence – Seeking information that supports your existing point of view
Framing – Structuring the situation in ways that favor one solution over another
Estimating and forecasting – Being overly influenced by vivid memories when estimating
Overconfidence – Not being honest about our abilities
Over Cautiousness – Too much prudence or too much fear of failure
Recallability – The risk of being influenced by what is top of mind or what is easily recalled.

There are 6 levels of Actions in any activity:

Determining the objective
Determining the strategy to achieve the objective
Determining the tactics to achieve the strategy.
Performing the actions that are established by the tactics.
Evaluate the actions to see if the objective was achieved.
Learning from the process to see if we could do it better next time.

While the first thing is to determine the objective, sometimes you determine the tactics and strategy based as much on the actions that you can perform. I was watching the Angels play the Yankees on TV. The announcer was saying that the Angels have a lot of injured players. And that the Coach, Mike Sosia, was a good coach because he has been able to change his game plan (Game plan here means his strategy and tactics) to fit the team that he has on the field. The announcers said that some coaches only have one game plan and use it no matter who is on the field, but the great coaches can change depending on what they have to work with.

A fundamental activity for all of us is Decision Making. Think about all the decisions you make in a given day.

I think you can divide people up by how they make decisions. Here are just a few types. And to make it easier to describe them, let me use the first decision I make everyday as the talking point. I am going to use the decision to get out of bed as the reference.

The first one is to decide to get out of bed. Those of us who think the person that invented the snooze button should get a Nobel Prize can really appreciate how hard this decision is every morning.

Buying a Car

Obviously the first thing you have to do is buy a car. This is often a major purchase. I am actually going through the process right now. My wife quit her job that came with a company car and so we have to replace it.

The TIDAL Approach to Decision Making

Introduction

Each of us has a different decision making style. Some people make decisions quickly. Others make decisions slowly. Some people like to make decisions by themselves. Others like to make decisions collaboratively.

Some people seem to make good decisions all the time. Others not so much. Some people blame others when their decisions do not pan out. Others blame themselves no matter what the reason things didn’t work out.

A lot of people take decision making for granted. These people don’t think they need tools to help them. They are wrong. Even the best athlete or artist uses tools to maximize their abilities. So why shouldn’t business people use tools to help them make better decisions.

The following approach to decision making is a tool to improve our decision-making.

Overview of the TIDAL Process

Decision making is a 5 step process.