Fab named their washing powder for its “fabulously clean, fabulously fresh and fabulously fragrant” qualities. My use of FaB is for Faster and Better decision making.
STOP. Don’t hang up the phone. You and I know that you and I are great decision makers…..and everyone else has the problem… right? So. This is not about your decision making. It’s about helping THEM. THEM being the people that work for you or the decision makers you are trying to influence.
Fab’s Fresh Frangipani has 15 key ingredients, including my personal favourite – Distyrylbiphenyl Disulfonate. Whereas my key to FaB decision making is much simpler. The key is categorisation.
Wtf I hear you express. You heard me. CATEGORISATION! Who would have thought? If you don’t believe me let’s check in with Jeff Bezos. He is the guy that runs that little online bookstore out of Seattle, Washington in the USA. Amazon, I think it is called.
Bezos introduced to Amazon the concept of categorising decisions with Type 1 and Type 2 decisions. Type 2 decisions are reversible. He is very comfortable with his team making these decisions straight out. In fact, he insists on it.
Type 1 decisions he calls “consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible”[1].
[1] What is high-velocity decision making? by Daniel J. PowerEditor, DSSResources.com
That is, they will hurt badly if we don’t get them right. Type 1 decisions need to be very well considered. Type 2 decisions can be made much faster.
Does Type 1 and Type 2 decision making sound familiar? Maybe you are thinking of the System 1 and System 2 categorisations made famous by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. I’ll explore this categorisation and how to improve various types of decision making and much, much more in my blogs over the coming weeks.