Decision Intelligence: In Action — Part 1
From “Orange Is the New Black” to “Questions Are the New Answers”…
This article is the first part of a series of articles about Decision Intelligence: IN ACTION. The focus in this series is always on some practical advice about how to apply the Decision Intelligence concept in the real world — be it in business, society or your private life.
This article provides specific advice about how to improve the quality of your work when dealing with things such as reports to supervisors, bachelor or master theses or even communicating to the public. In short, I will explain how three of the four core elements of the Decision Intelligence Navigator (3.0) — Decision Context, Framework Proficiency, Intelligence Access — serve as a guideline to be more productive and effective in your academic or analytical work. To start with, I introduce a few of my major hypotheses:
In today’s world, more and more knowledge (including data & information) becomes a commodity.
In today’s world, the key challenge is not to gather data, information or knowledge but to filter it according to each decision-making challenge one faces.
When I coach executives or supervise PhDs, master or bachelor theses or other projects, I experience that my coachees hardly ever experience the challenge that they lack the (access to) knowledge but rather struggle to decide that of the rich pool of available knowledge they want to put into their project report/analysis, master thesis or even academic paper.
Similarly, I get increasingly bored by papers, reports and especially E-MAILS that provide me with some information or knowledge but no clear indication of whether we have a problem, what the problem is and what the alternatives to decide about might be.
That’s why I have ‘developed’ the DFI Approach ((Decision) Context, Framework (Proficiency), Intelligence (Access)) that everybody who works closely with me as a business partner, coachee or student is strongly suggested to follow (if they expect me to answer or provide feedback):
- Clearly DEFINE the audience of your report, paper or article. Ideally, you nail it down to a specific DECISION-MAKER (ROLE).
This might sound easy but believe me, I often see drafts where my executive coachees list 4–5 different decision-makers that they deem important and it takes quite some efforts to ‘force’ them to pin it down to a single decision-maker (role). Even worse, students define their assignment as “Doing a market study”…but do not define who the specific reader will be nor which specific decision he/she needs to make.
Clearly IDENTIFY the DECISION-MAKING CHALLENGE of the decision-maker (role) (defined in 1.) that your report, paper or article should help to master; i.e. once your targeted decision-maker (role) has read your report, paper or article, which specific decision-making challenge can your decision-maker master better?
Again, this sounds not very difficult but to formulate a single major decision-making challenge is something most of my coachees and students hardly ever do before conducting their research/analysis work. You need to answer completely different questions when the decision-making challenge you work on is on assessing potential business models that could work in a new (geographical) market compared to the actual market entry decision. However, most of my students always fall back to a report structure and content that follows more or less what they have learnt from their text books rather than confidently defining the questions (and providing the answers) that they think matter given the decision-maker & decision-making challenge they were supposed to work on.
Now put yourself first into the role of the identified decision-maker and CREATE a list of QUESTIONS that you think the decision-maker needs to get answered to make the decision (aka “decision-making challenge”). In a second step, create a logical sequence of the questions to be answered and write each question down on paper (aka your report, assignment etc.).
On average, an assignment or business report requires between 20 and 60 carefully formulated questions. I am aware that this is some work but once it is done properly, you can work much faster during the rest of the project.
I personally also apply this approach when writing articles for top academic journals. However, I then envision the audience not as the actual readers (e.g. other professors, consultants etc.) as my decision-maker (i.e. audience) but the reviewers of the targeted journal. Why? Because the decision-making challenge that supposed to work on (for my own benefit) is not primarily to create value for the reader but to satisfy the reviewer’s requirements for an appropriate academic paper. The questions to be answered for the reviewer as compared to the actual reading audience do not necessarily overlap 100%. - Before now simply answering each question in a (often) instructured way, you need to spend some time to identify which kind of FRAMEWORK(s) or MODEL(s) can help you to provide a STRUCTURED answer in case you already have all the intelligence (i.e. data, information, knowledge, insights) — or — if you don’t have all the required knowledge yet—the framework(s) or model(s) help you to understand what data, information, knowledge or insights you are still missing and guide your subsequent intelligence-gathering activities.
This is now the part where most managers bring their Bachelor of Commerce, Masters in Management or MBA knowledge to the table. The most important success factor during this second step is what we label in the Decision Intelligence Navigator 3.0 as FRAMEWORK PROFICIENCY; i.e. how proficient are you in selecting the most appropriate framework(s) to answer the questions listed as output of the Decision Context element.
For example, most of my students and coachees perform sooner or later a “market analysis”. However, they hardly ever a) are clear about which questions they need to answer nor b) which framework is the most suitable one (you find an academic paper about this here) to answer a specific question. Let’s imagine you want to understand how attractive a specific market (segment) is — what do you normally do? YES, you apply Michael Porter’s 5 Forces framework and evaluate the power distribution (aka how much value are you likely to capture if you position yourself) in this market. But in today’s business context with converging industries you also need to consider a concept called “keystone player in business ecosystems” to better understand the current or predict the future power distribution within a larger business context than your market segment only. - Once you have selected all the frameworks which help you to answer the relevant questions in a structured way, you face now the challenge to fill each dimension of your relevant frameworks with intelligence (i.e. data, information, knowledge, insights; it depends on each dimension of your frameworks). For the dimensions where you already have the required intelligence it is a relatively simple step because you now have already a proper structure (in the form of the frameworks) for the provision of the necessary intelligence. For the frameworks where you still lack the intelligence to provide proper answers (to master the decision-making challenge), the identified frameworks or models serve as your guide to gather the necessary INTELLIGENCE and help you to estimate a) the efforts and time and b) identify the most suitable sources and methodologies.
For example, I once supported the strategy department of a large automotive company to create a better understanding how the company’s future business model (for a specific kind of vehicle) in an Asian country might look like. Besides the fact that we also went through step 1 and 2 of the proposed DFI approach, the company only realized and the end of step 2 that they did not have to study more reports and market databases but rather access local industry experts and their understanding of the future business context. Subsequently, the company’s head of strategy significantly changed the internal team composition, tools & methodologies used and external partners involved to access the required intelligence.
I want to be clear that none of the recommendations above is genuinely new or innovative but applying it consistently to all my major decision-making challenges or the projects I support and supervise has — at least for me—dramatically improved the quality (in terms of real-world impact) of the work I get involved.
There are plenty of similar approaches and today’s management literature is full of examples that are building upon the same logic probably best summarized by the following much more famous people:
Make sure you provide answers to questions that matter for your audience!
In short, what most executives are not (able to) investing enough in is: TIME to THINK!
How to go about that in practice will be the focus of one of the next ‘Decision Intelligence: In Action’ articles.
