If you have been reading my blogs these past six weeks, you will know what I mean by Go Mental. And that means co-creating a decision map to improve your team’s decisions. Last week I introduced some very simple tools, while mentioning more sophisticated tools like data models built using machine learning or AI.

If you design and utilise simple tools like rapid ranking or decision trees, often these are only used as inputs to a decision to be made by a group. And we all know that groupthink is a thing.

Group decisions can be flawed by peer pressure and the loudest voice in the room are two examples. Research has shown that group decision making can be improved by averaging group independent assessments [1]. Other research shows that decisions can be further improved by groups creating a robust average of assessments where extreme outliers are excluded [2].

One option I utilise is anonymous voting. Modern apps like Slido and Mentimeter make this relatively straightforward depending on what is being assessed. For example, providing a range of choices across an interval scale where the intervals are proportionate. This does however cause conflict between a practical vs academic, or pure statistical view, as to whether you can average an Ordinal or Likert scale. The practical view is that the averaging is helpful in decision making [3], and 80% of the time I will always go for practical. However, sometimes a decision is so critical, any misguidance from misguided science must be avoided!

For more on decision making and why we get decisions wrong, you might want to check out this whitepaper called Think it Through.