Team Decision Making: There's No Good System!

Looking at Jason’s posting on Cognitive Bias, I find myself inspired to write about team decision making processes.  Why?  It seems to me that the people who are cerebral enough to internalize the implications of this list are also unlikely to be the talkative or assertive ones in meetings.

Here’s a summary of the categories of team decision processes:

1. Dictator:  The Dictator makes the decision with no consultation.  Decisions are made on the evidence as perceived by the Dictator – this includes their cognitive biases.  Disenfranchises the team.
2. Director:  The Director makes the decision after consultation.  The plays to the cognitive biases of the Director – messages reinforcing their initial position will be valued higher than those against.  It does have the benefit that it is inclusive; the team feels heard – particularly if it is clear that everyone’s position has been solicited.
3. Voting:  The team votes to make a decision.  Voting is a lousy system, even to run a democracy.  Using a voting system would be to assume that the cognitive biases of the team are not aligned – very unlikely.  Further the timing of the vote is crucial, and it will usually be requested by the first party in the debate to feel they have achieved some alignment.  However, using a vote to identify participant’s positions can be a powerful technique, particularly if you suspect the team is in “flaming” agreement!
4. Collegiate:  The team makes the decision with no formal processes. The Collegiate process is subject to all sorts of team dynamics – who talks loudest, who talks longest, who talks last, where each sit, who repeats themselves most etc.
5. Engineered:  The decision analysis technique and criteria is identified up-front, alternatives solutions are generated, then evaluated against the decision process criteria.  The best match with the criteria indicates is the decision. The Engineered approach is less subject to the vagaries created by cognitive bias, but it also takes the most work – there is the question of how to make decisions about the analysis techniques and evaluation criteria.
6. Scientific:  Hypotheses are generated, tests are set up with control experiments, results are subjected to a barrage of statistical techniques and are subject to extended peer review.  The hypothesis stands until it can be disproved. The scientific method is un-feasible for most organizational purposes, on account of being too slow, too resource intensive and too inconclusive.

Whether you agree with this synopsis depends on your character type…in Jungian terms, if you are “Judger” (87.6% of Executives), you won’t have time for this debate – you think it’s specious.  But if you are a “Perceiver” (12.4% of Executives) you’ll be interested in considering the implications (but you may struggle with choosing a process for your team!).

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Decision+making, Vote, Director, Dictator, Scientific+Method, Engineering, Collegiate, Briggs+Myers, Jungian, Character+Type