Decision making and Creativity Flashcards
What is decision making?
The conscious process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs
What is rational choice decision making?
The process of using pure logic and all available information about all alternatives to choose the alternative with the highest value
What are two main elements of rational choice?
- Calculating the best alternative (Subjective expected utility)
- Decision-making process
What is a problem?
A deviation between the current and the desired situation-the gap between “what is” and “what ought to be”.
What is a opportunity?
A deviation between current expectations and a potentially better situation that was not previously expected.
What are the six steps of Rational choice decision-making process?
- Identify a problem or opportunity
- Choose the best decision process
- Develop alternative solutions
- Select the choice with the highest value
- Implement the selected choice
- Evaluate the selected choice
What are the 3 types of decision processes?
- Lean practices: Efficiency based with systematic data collection and analysis (science one)
- Agile practices: Relies on a team that targets specific issues requiring improvement, where the issues are dynamic or unstable
- Design thinking: Cross-functional autonomous teams working with the client to solve problems
Which factors dictate what decision process to use?
- Whether to solve the problem alone or involve others in the process.
- How much time is available to make the decision.
- Degree of decision uncertainty.
- Whether the problem is routine or novel.
What are the five biggest challenges in Problem Identification?
- Solution-focused problems
- Decisive leadership
- Stakeholder framing
- Perceptual defense
- Mental models
How can you identify problems more effectively?
- Be aware of problem identification biases (PI challenges)
- Resist temptations to look decisive
- Develop a norm of “divine discontent”
- Discuss the situation with colleagues
What is bounded rationality?
The view that people are bounded in their decision making capabilities, including
* access to limited information
* limited information processing
* tendency toward satisficing rather than maximizing when making choices.
What are three problems with information processing in choosing alternatives since people rarely use rational choice decision making?
- Sequentially appraise only a few alternatives and only a handful of characteristics
- Rarely line up their limited range of alternatives at the same time to select the best phone
- Assess alternatives sequentially using an implicit favourite: A preferred alternative that the decision maker uses repeatedly as a comparison with other choices
Why do people compare alternatives sequentially against an implicit favourite?
- The difficulty of having all alternatives available at the same time ∴ one of the choices found early on in sequential processing becomes the implicit favourite.
- We have a natural preference for comparing two choices rather than systematically assessing many alternatives simultaneously ∴ Implicit favourite becomes the anchor
- We are cognitive misers, minimizing mental effort with a preferred alternative and then looking mainly for evidence that supports the preferred choice
- The human need for cognitive consistency and coherence, We want to think and act logically so we align our emotional preference with logical choice
What is the anchor and adjustment heuristic? (Decision heuristic)
A natural tendency for people
to be influenced by an initial
anchor point such that they do
not sufficiently move away
from that point as new
information is provided
What is the availability heuristic (Decision heuristic)
A natural tendency to assign
higher probabilities to objects
or events that are easier to
recall from memory, even
though ease of recall is also
affected by nonprobability
factors (e.g., emotional
response, recent events)
