CREATIVE DECISION

MAKING & PROBLEM

SOLVING: INTEGRATED
THINKING APPROACH

Creating Greater Freedom for Your Success

Integrated
Thinking Approach

Creating Greater Freedom for Your Success

 • Formalized their various teams' meeting agendas, so
that every employee knew they would get a weekly
Decisions chance to present a plan that Google's leadership
team could choose to act on or not-Emphasis was
Approach: placed on efficiency.
• "I cannot tell you how many people have told me
that at Google decisions are made today quickly in
Eric Schimidt almost every case, even at our current scale,"
• “Most large corporations have too many lawyers, too
many decision-makers, unclear owners, and things
Former CEO Google; congeal, they occur very slowly.“
Chairman Alphabet
• Schmidt noted that even when Google chose to
acquire YouTube in a $1.6 billion deal in 2006, the
decision process took only 10 days.
• At Google, Schmidt explained, it's clear whose
responsibilities are what, and decisions don't get
caught in bureaucratic limbo.
• "Even if it's the wrong decision, a quick decision is
better than almost every case," he said.
 • Look beyond first impressions and undertake
thorough “homework”,
• Avoid making decisions in isolation.
Decisions
• Every decision has some degree of impact on
Approach: your ability to adopt other future opportunities in
what the experts call ‘the decision stream’.
• “This one may be a ‘too good to miss’
Richard opportunity but how will it affect other projects or
Branson priorities and, if now is not the best time to do it,
what risks if any are there in putting the thing on
hold for an agreed period of time?”
• Stepping back to assess the bigger picture can
help make the top priorities clear: Both for
yourself, and for the business.
• If you cannot manage this project in addition to
another that’s waiting in the wings, which one
gets the nod and why?
 1. Ask a question.
2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it
3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try
to assign a probability of truth to each one.
Decisions AXIOM: a statement or proposition which is
regarded as being established, accepted, or self-
Approach: evidently true.
4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to
determine: a)Are these axioms correct, b) Are
Ellon Musk they relevant, c) Do they necessarily lead to this
conclusion, and c) With what probability?
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion - Seek
refutation from others to further help break your
conclusion.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then
you're probably right, but you're not certainly
right
 • Type 1 decisions are not reversible, and you have
to be very careful making them.
• Type 2 decisions are like walking through a door —
if you don't like the decision, you can always go
Jeff Bezos back.
• The problem, Bezos writes, comes from confusing
the two:
Type 1 & Type • As organizations get larger, there seems to be a
2 Decisions – tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-
making process on most decisions, including many
Type 2 decisions.
• The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk
aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and
consequently diminished invention.
• We'll have to figure out how to fight that tendency.
 Type 1 &
Type 2
Decisions in
Practice
 • Use swot analysis to enhance
your decision making
• This helps you leverage your
leverage
• SWOT analysis - strengths,
Use SWOT weakness, opportunities, and
Analysis threats
• SWOT analysis is critical to stragic
decision making and strategy
formulation
 a) Being shortsighted
b) Continuing a project merely because you
started it
Use c) Being afraid of the unknown
Decision d) Resting on your laurels
frameworks e) Intuiting that the future follows a straight line
from past patterns
to avoid
f) Being distracted by new (but possibly
irrelevant) technology
• Enter your strategic planning and budgeting
session with an open mind, clear
communications, a collaborative outlook.
Decision Making- An Integrated Thinking Approach
INSTITUTIONAL POLICY
DEVELOPMENT

CAPABUIL Experts Will

Modernize, Develop,
Review, Update Or
Enhance Your Tools, 1. How do you take decisions to solve
Systems & Policy problems daily?
Frameworks:

Contact Us on 2. Do you have an internalized

0734097592 or methodology?
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EXERCISE

Write Down 2 lessons

you have learned in this
presentation

What do you commit to

implement after this
training?
Discussion

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