Have your cake and eat it too — decision-making is about to get tastier.

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. — Peter Drucker

A world in which you could have your cake and eat it too, what an impossibly enticing realm for human existence that would make.

The age-old idiomatic proverb “You can’t have your cake and eat it (too)” poetically illustrates one of the human condition’s most pervasive characteristics: decision-making and the trade-offs they accompany. From the Latin root cis, meaning “to cut off”, decision is a scary word. At its very core it promises sacrifice, a choice at the expense of another, i.e., a trade-off. Hence, why you can’t have your cake and eat it too — the simple act of eating the cake renders the other option impossible — a scary scenario indeed.

But what if that might not always be the case. What if by some miracle, by some technological advancement, trade-offs were soon to disappear altogether?

Photo by Charles 🇵🇭 on Unsplash

Decision-making today: Trade-offs that hurt less.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing (…). — Michael Porter

Ever since the advent of free-will, now some time ago, beings of all sorts have been faced with the stark reality of trade-offs. Corporate empires, fortunes, careers, relationships, and dinner choices have all been made and broken by deliberate, thoughtful, and sometimes knee-jerk decision-making. However, the nature of the decisions we are called to make, inside and outside the boardroom, is changing. As technology, through thoughtful and deliberate customer experience, slowly frees us from traditional time and space constraints, it streamlines how we make decisions, and fundamentally alters the options we have available to us — some examples:

• Facebook feeds regulate what we see and read.
• Tinder swipes determine whom we speak to.
• Spotify playlists dictate the music we discover.
• LinkedIn job recommendations shape the careers we build.
• Uber Eats options determine the meals we experience.

Through algorithm-powered self-censorship, technology has shown that it can shape the way we approach decision-making by freeing us of options we seemingly might not want. Not into hip-hop music? Not an issue, Spotify will ensure no G-funk sound waves ever make it to your ears. A desire to pursue a career in or start networking with individuals working in investment banking? LinkedIn can help out via tailored jobs or connections recommendations. As we move deeper into the 21st century, the pain traditionally associated with trade-offs lessens and makes way to a certainty of outcomes — you have less to lose if you’re happy with all options presented to you. Should Tinder understand your preference for profiles of 30-year-old bearded French-Canadian men who enjoy traveling, coffee and sailing, you would find yourself choosing between varying degrees of this author’s profile.

Technology today helps declutter decision-making, for better or for worse. It’s now not so much about weighing risk VS reward, as it is about choosing between varying degrees of want.

Decision-making tomorrow: no more trade-offs.

The world is yours. — A blimp, Scarface

With technology playing an ever more important role in helping us make the decisions that shape our lives, it is not so far-fetched to imagine a future in which we no longer have to make decisions at all — or rather we don’t have to make decisions that involve trade-offs. A few lucky individuals can already experience instances in which they can have their cake and eat it too — some examples:

• Buyers of a Tesla Roadster don’t have to sacrifice performance for environmental consciousness.
• Eaters of Impossible Burgers don’t have to compromise on taste for ethical implications of eating animals.
• Shoppers at Uniqlo no longer have to choose between style and affordable prices.

As we move towards a world in which trade-offs and compromises are no longer a real facet of decision-making, it becomes an interesting exercise of the mind to picture various futures and how they might impact our lives.

Artificial intelligence as a decision maker

• While most of us might not realize it, artificial intelligence (AI) is in the decision game. Through powerful data processing and learning algorithms, AI predicts outcomes and makes decisions based on statistical probability. As we outsource a larger degree of our decisions to technology, AI will become better at making them for us. There may be a future world in which we no longer concern ourselves with decisions altogether and simply enjoy the outcomes AI creates for us.

Avatars as possibilities

• We’ve all dreamt of living out someone else’s life, or to not be bound by our own bodies and capabilities so as to live out our wildest ambitions. A version of that has already been made possible in video games, but thanks to augmented reality and other futurist technologies, it is not impossible to think about a future in which we can, through control of a host of avatars, use the world as our digital playground. One avatar goes to work and earns a living, another learns how to fly planes, and another one stays at home spending time with family. There are no more trade-offs if you could live out each and every scenario through a personal army of avatars.

Photo by TK Hammonds on Unsplash

Help until the future arrives… part 1

Until technology rids of us of trade-offs altogether, we will all have to continue making decisions — an uncomfortable thought indeed. But why are decisions so complicated?

Decision-making is, at its core, about predicting the future. By weighing options against each other, assigning values to trade-offs, and ultimately making a decision, individuals are in the process of determining the likelihood of hypothetical outcomes — e.g. predicting the future. This process is often complicated through a lack of insight into one of three key factors:

• Uncertainty (i.e. risk)
• Value (i.e. reward)
• Priorities (i.e. decision criteria)

By striving to better understand how their decisions play alongside these three factors, decision-makers can reduce complexity in decision-making. Developed throughout decades of field research and life-living, this author developed the following two tools, to be used in tandem, to ease misalignment around the three key factors and increase comfort with decision-making.

TOOL 1: The Decision Matrix

The Decision Matrix evaluates a decision alongside two axes. The Y axis measures the degree of uncertainty related to the decision, while the X axis measures the value that can be generated through the decision. For this author, the decision to eat your cake would fall in the low uncertainty and high value quadrant, as there is low uncertainty as to what happens if you eat your cake and high value as cake is delicious.

Graph by Nic Connolly

• Star: Decisions that fall in the upper right quadrant should be prioritized.
  Decision makers can leverage the Decision Grid (below) to make a decision quickly and confidently. You can move on to the Decision Grid.
• Arrow: The upper left quadrant features decisions that should be prioritized but outsourced to trusted stakeholders so as to minimize the amount of effort required in decision-making. You can move on to the Decision Grid.
• Lightning Bolt: The lower right quadrant features decisions that should not be prioritized at this point in time. Decision makers should invest the appropriate amount of resources to research and reduce uncertainty before making a decision.
• X: The lower left quadrant features decisions that should not be prioritized at this point in time. However, decision makers should tread carefully given high uncertainty and ensure these are not set aside completely.

TOOL 2: The Decision Grid

The Decision Grid evaluates a decision alongside five criteria, which should be adjusted for each and every use. Each criterion should be given a score of 0 (no), 1 (maybe), and 2 (yes), a cut-off ranking should be determined, and the five rankings should be added up, to a maximum of 10. This author created cake eating decision criteria and ranked them below. As you can see, the cake should be eaten.

Graph by Nic Connolly

Help until the future arrives… part 2

While useful, the above decision-making tools don’t solve for the most unpredictable element of decision-making, the decision maker himself. As such, it remains important to stay clear of certain human-enabled decision pitfalls. The following are four that this author has encountered (multiple times) and recommends you stay clear from:

1. Taking too long: Taking too long to make a decision can easily lead to missed opportunities. Make decisions quickly, as you’ll never have all the information you need.
2. Becoming decision-paralyzed: Overthinking and overanalyzing can easily lead the most seasoned decision makers into circular thinking and decision paralysis. Most decisions can be undone.
3. Sticking to bad calls: Pride in decision-making can quickly bring down an organization. Don’t be afraid to recognize a bad decision and adjust accordingly.
4. Having the cake: That’s just a bad decision, you should always eat the cake.