Optimizing, Settling, and Satisficing: making efficient decisions
9 May 2011
Everyone wants to make good decisions. Nobody shows up to a meeting, raises their hand, and says, “Please, let’s fail to make decisions today and thereby place the company and our jobs in jeopardy.” And yet a lot of teams approach decision making in ways which may do exactly that.People often confuse making a right decision with making an optimal decision. You hear the misguided thinking when people talk about making the right choice instead of a right choice.
Searching for optimal decisions is usually impractical. When you have limited information and available options which don’t mirror your ideas of perfection, “optimizing” can leave you wandering in circles. The more variables you try to optimize (cost, time, visual appeal, consensus, etc.) the worse this becomes. People involved in the decision making process begin to tire as good options are rejected for failing to optimize one or more variables, and the cost of deciding quickly outweighs the benefits.
Satisficing is usually a better decision making strategy. You want to satisfy critical requirements while achieving sufficient (not optimal) results. Satisfy + suffice = satisfice.
To satisfice, you need to start with clear requirements. Requirements are clear when you can answer yes or no to whether or not they have been fulfilled. The more requirements you have, the harder it will reach a decision.Second, you need to set clear expectations of the outcome. You are not looking for the best of all possible results but rather a result that is good enough.
Finally,
