Ask. Listen. Decide.

In the summer of 1772, Benjamin Franklin received a letter from his friend, the English scientist, Joseph Priestley. Priestley was torn between relinquishing his position as the minister of the Unitarian church Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds and accepting a lucrative position as the general assistant to the Earl of Shelburne. As many of us would do when placed in a position like this, Priestley turned to a friend for advice. Franklin’s response was more of a guideline to frame Priestley’s thinking:

To get over this, my Way is, to divide half a Sheet of Paper by a Line into two Columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then during three or four Days Consideration I put down under the different Heads short Hints of the different Motives that at different Times occur to me for or against the Measure. When I have thus got them all together in one View, I endeavour to estimate their respective Weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out: If I find a Reason pro equal to some two Reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two Reasons con equal to some three Reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the Ballance lies; and if after a Day or two of farther Consideration nothing new that is of Importance occurs on either side, I come to a Determination accordingly.

Franklin’s method would come to be called “Prudential Algebra” and it represented a structured and formulated way in going about making a decision by assigning weights to various options.

While much has changed since Franklin’s days, decision making continues to be a process largely composed of instinct and intuition. Yet, the decisions we make daily can have profound impacts on not just our personal lives but on our careers, families, and those we are responsible for.

So what have we learned, if anything in the last few hundred years when it comes to this important action we all perform?

Effective decision making has been a topic of extensive research for a while now. Most notably by Business School Professor, Paul Nutt, who collected and studied over 400 decisions by upper-level management in government, corporate, and non-profit organizations.

A major takeaway from his research is that only 15% of the decisions he studied involved the decision maker actively seeking alternative options beyond their initial choice. Subsequently Professor Nutt found that only 29% of decision makers considered more than one alternative to their decision before deciding. From these studies, decisions which considered only one option were considered bad decisions half of the time. On the other hand, decisions which considered multiple options were considered good two thirds of the time.

This is further echoed by Ray Dalio — founder of Bridgewater Associates. During his TED talk on radical transparency and decision making, Ray highlights one of his main shifts in management styles which informs the core of his decision making: “Rather than thinking ‘Am I right? I started asking myself, ‘How do I know I am right?’”. By moving his focus away from affirming his ideas and biases to focusing on seeking alternative solutions for his decisions amongst his peers and co-workers, Ray has been able to stay competitive and build one of the most successful hedge funds out there.

To help avoid the pitfalls in decision making and improve the likelihood of a successful decision, we’ve put together a system to help navigate the decision making process. It consists of three phases: Ask, Listen, and Decide. These phases make up the decision process, and if you stick to them, they should help guide you through the tough decisions you have been stuck on.

Ask.

Every decision begins as a question. Framing a decision as a question allows for directionality and clarity on what information will be needed. However, avoid under-constraining or over-constraining your decision with the question you choose.

By under-constraining your question, there is little direction for people to know how to meaningfully weigh in and contribute to your decision which opens up the possibility for irrelevant input or no input at all.

On the other hand, by over-constraining your question, you are effectively making a predetermined decision by not allowing room for any new input, thereby falling back into the pitfall of bad decision making described above.

Some simple tips here can be pulled from the Design Thinking toolkit such as rephrasing binary Yes/No questions with “How might we…” questions. Another tip is to think of how you can phrase your question from another vantage point — maybe your customer’s.

Listen.

Once you are set to go with your question and have some direction towards your decision, it is time to bring in the right people and come up with a set of ideas that will form the decision of your question.

Research has shown a strong correlation between the number of viable ideas and the success of the decision itself. The most consistent way to increase the number of viable ideas is to increase the diversity in the people informing your decision. A diverse group, which may not share your experiences and perspectives, allows space for new ideas to surface, be challenged, and refined.

Listening requires time though. While at first this may sound like a drawback, in actuality setting aside the time needed for this actually helps save you time in the long run.

For starters, having the patience to source a reliable set of ideas, will prevent you from converging onto the first or loudest solution that comes to mind. In addition, decisions that need to be made immediately are rare in most work environments. This means that we are either pre-emptively making our decisions or we are procrastinating and making them at the last moment.

Both scenarios will increase the likelihood of making a bad decision, so becoming comfortable with giving enough time for you to source the right perspectives for a decision ultimately helps steer you clear of either pitfall.

Decide.

Once the conversation has begun to converge around a set of viable ideas, it is time to decide. Given the breadth of complexities a decision may entail and factors outside of your control, one of the most important steps in the Decide phase is to take count of what you are missing and what is unknown.

Much like how your question can help orient the Listen phase, which surfaces the ideas for your decision, understanding the perspectives you were not able to bring in or the relevant factors which may still be unknown can help orient your final decision.

This can have the benefit of confirming that you managed to consider most unknowns and gathered a strong representation of ideas to decide on, in which case you are free to make a more aggressive decision. On the other hand, this reflection can help highlight that there are still a lot of unknowns in which case you should make a more conservative and cautious decision.

With the decision made, the final steps are to ensure that it is communicated to the relevant people clearly and that next steps are outlined to ensure that this decision results in an action.

Ultimately — the goal of the Ask. Listen. Decide. system is to optimize the number of viable alternatives for every decision you make in a focused and constructive way. By doing so, you are statistically likely to make a better decision than by not doing so and going with your gut instinct.

While the process requires discipline and patience, it is not impossible to carry out. We’ve built Uni to facilitate this process and ensure you can focus on making smart decisions and executing them while Uni takes care of the busywork. We are in beta right now working with teams across industries and would love for you to join. You can jump right in and get started with Uni here.