Key skills for 2022: Effective decision making

The pandemic has continued to highlight the need for all of us to make decisions at a time of great uncertainty, often with greater urgency, frequency, and ramifications than ever before.

According to a 2018 Future of Jobs report by the World Economic Forum, decision-making is one of the top skills which is expected to remain inherently human because it is so complex to automate. We spoke to Dr Barbara Fasolo, Associate Professor of Behavioural Science and Dr Umar Taj, Guest Teacher, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, to find out more.

They explain that the three most useful skills for 2022, in terms of decision making, will be the ability to make better judgements that inform our decisions, debias our own judgements and design better choice architecture – that is displaying and presenting all the relevant information in order to make a decision.

So, how can we gain these skills and make better decisions?

“Get in the habit of writing your decisions down, write down what judgements and assumptions you’re making in this decision, and once you’ve made your decision, come back to your notes and see whether you were correct or not. This is a way to improve on your judgement-making ability and be well calibrated; that is, to know what you know and know what you don’t know.” Says Umar.

Barbara explains that another tip to improve our decision-making is have a ‘decision buddy’ or be one to someone else. “Sometimes it’s easier to spot biases in other people [than yourself] because you’re too close to yourself, whereas other people can spot your own bias very easily.” Our decision buddy can probe us further or give us a different perspective on the situation.

Decision-making is a very complex and subjective task, what else should we be mindful of when we have a decision to make?

People often struggle with decision-making because of narrow framing, that is, thinking that their decisions need to be ‘either or’, Barbara encourages that we expand our options and ask ourselves “what else could I do?”.

“We also must be aware of our emotions and how they spill over into our judgements and our decisions, particularly the confidence we have in those judgements. If we feel great, we tend to be overconfident and if we feel lousy, we’re often underconfident.” She recommends having a cooling-off period before making the final decision or have a decision buddy to help us manage our bias.

Finally, Barbara explains that we should aim to be strategic rather than reactive in our decision-making and most importantly, be excited and empowered that we’re free to make a decision.

Dr Barbara Fasolo will be sharing more insights on our Strategic Decision Making for Management executive education programme.