Making better decisions using MAP
A simple process to help avoid your cognitive bias’s when making decisions
The pioneering work of Kahneman and Tversky highlighted how people are not the rational beings that Economics 101 supposes. We are full of quirks and irrational behaviors that cause us to make seemingly illogical decisions. These decisions however are irrational in predictable ways. Knowing this, and understanding about these cognitive bias’s can allow you to utilise tools that deliberately reduce the risk of falling prey to these errors.
One of these tools that has been developed to help make smart decisions is the Mediating Assessments Protocol (MAP). Using MAP is a process
that requires a leader or a team to delay articulating which of a certain set of outcomes will turn out to be the best choice….[it] has a single goal:
“To put off gut-based decision-making until a choice can be informed by a number of separate factors.”
When making decisions people can quickly make a choice without a lot of data or heavily weighting a particular factor and then go in search of data which confirms their initial decision — also know as confirmation bias.
MAP seeks to reduce this tendency by getting a decision making team to lay out first the criteria they are going to use to make a decision and then go look for information against each of the criteria.
it is designed to guide decision makers to identify independent qualities in any decision, and evaluate them separately and explicitly, before trying to make an overall decision.
For instance say you are looking at whether to invest in a project at work. Possible criteria to assess this decision against might include
- Possible economic return
- Likelihood of success
- Experience of the team delivering the project
- External trends and influences
- Internal support for the project
The initial job of the decision making team is to objectively look for evidence answering each of these questions, and then work through discussing and debating each one individually. Especially important through this process is to look out for dis-confirming evidence — what do you already know now that might tell you this is a bad decision. I have previously written about examples of some of these decision making tools such as with the planning fallacy.
Given how unreliable human judgment is, all evaluations are susceptible to errors. These errors can stem from known cognitive biases — or they can be random errors, sometimes called “noise.” (MIT Sloan)
A Washington Post article highlights that:
In addition to being a more disciplined approach to big strategic decisions, it may also help limit dreaded groupthink.
“By breaking up the process and making it fact-based, we’re doing as much as we can to inhibit groupthink,” Kahneman said. “Groupthink is as about the conclusion, [and with MAP] you’re trying not to get to the conclusion too early.”
… it can be uncomfortable to think this way because our brains are geared toward “excessive coherence,” or the tendency to suppress contradicting evidence.
Importantly, MAP is not all about an algorithmic process that leaves no room for human intuition and gut feel. These can be important aspects of making great decisions.
MAP isn’t about … taking the human factor out of decision making. It’s instead about holding back on the gut-level, intuitive decision making until after you’ve eliminated as much uncertainty as possible.
Whilst a process to consider all the options is important to help circumvent your cognitive bias’s, speed is also another aspect in making a decision that may run counter to an elaborate data gathering exercise. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin, explains in the GreyMatter Podcast how for many scenarios you should priorities speed when making a decision. Fighter pilots refer to this speed as the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) — and the pilot with the fastest OODA loop wins. In fact he points out that often you can make the wrong decision and get yourself back on track quicker than it might take you to find out all the information to make the right decision. Reid suggests the following approach:
- Confronted with a decision — make a provisional decision — gun to the head you have to decide.
- To make you more comfortable with the provisional decision — what specifically would I want to know? Who should I talk to?
- What are the macro thing that would cause me to change the decision?What would it cost to go do that?
- What is the cost of being wrong?
This approach acknowledges, like the MAP process, that gut decisions might not be correct. It also takes advantage of learnings from lean startup methodology, that sometimes the only way forward is to actually start and learn, iterate and pivot along the way as more information becomes available.
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