One of my favourite courses to run at the University of Canterbury in the Executive Education programme is that of 'Kill Your Darlings - Applied Decision Making'.
Not just because I love the name of it (** see footnote for the explainer on this), but because it's an area that affects us all. We are decision-making machines!
It’s reported we’re making approximately 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day, Cornell University found that about 226.7 of these daily decisions are on food alone!
There’s a constant demand to decide.
Yet this is a skill often ignored and developed through experience and time, but is one we can all continue to develop and improve.
Here are two areas to review:
1. With five major ethnic groups in Aoteaora, and five generations in the workplace, how we collaborate and harness the power of this is key. We have the unique advantage of being able to leverage diverse wisdom to make great decisions. Developing competency in group-based decision-making is essential for everyone today.
2. We’re all also bombarded with options, which creates ”The Paradox of Choice”, a concept introduced by Barry Schwartz. While having options can improve our experience, an excess of choices can lead to negative outcomes like decision fatigue, increased anxiety, and decreased satisfaction.
With our decision demand high, this overload can result in poorer decision quality, heightened stress, and a feeling of being overwhelmed. Simplifying choices can mitigate these effects, enhancing well-being and productivity by reducing unnecessary decision-making burdens and increasing overall satisfaction. Barry’s TED talk on this is good winter watching.
The course covers critical topics such as decision-making styles, overcoming psychological biases, and using practical tools and frameworks to navigate complex decisions, so while this is a little pitch on the course, it’s more so a reminder to keep investing in building capability in decision making as the demands are only likely to grow.
** "Kill your darlings" is a phrase originating from writer and professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's 1914 lecture, advising authors to eliminate elements of their work they are overly attached to but which do not serve the overall piece.
