BETTER DECISION MAKING
Saturday, September 18, 2021
The best decisions I’ve made in my life were those little forks in tiny roads type – about which meeting to attend, which one to dodge, which person to meet, or not. When I trace back the route that got me here, or there, or some point of accomplishment – it has always been a trail of direction changes, forks in the road and meeting people I never expected to meet on roads I could never have predicted I would travel down.
However, a course of recently taken around decision making in somewhat formal proceedings (a tribunal panel) where hearing issues and sorting out the messes and quarrels of others brings into play a form of discipline most first-year law students would find simple to understand, for me, it was a one-part refresher on things I’ve done before and, another-part trigger to examine/re-examine some things I do in within my practices.
It is easy to understand good decisions and what goes into them (or inevitably flaws them) when looking into the rearview mirror.
Looking ahead, that’s another matter.
But it’s more than considering all the evidence, opinions and arguments of the parties – which, for most of us, is the committee of ‘me, myself, and I’ …
There’s that part of explaining the logical flow, articulating the reasons for the decision – something we would surely want to do if presenting to the parties to any dispute, but when those parties exist in our heads, between our ears, I wonder if we give each party a fair hearing? Do we sort the emotional opinion from the expert evidence, do we sort the facts from the fears, from the fear of the unknowns? I don’t think we do.
Finally, explaining the decision – something we aren’t required to do internally. It might be changing our daily schedule on the fly, we don’t need to tell anyone what we decided or how we got there, and then we do it. But what if, what if explained our choices out loud to another party, would our path from question/problem addressing through our decision making process make sense, are our conclusions fact-based rational ones, and can we describe it clearly to the ‘man from Mars’ in a plain language fashion anyone can understand?
Reader feedback:
Shandro is not responsible for health policy. Kenny steered that ship into the reefs all by himself. But he can’t be held responsible for Alberta’s relatively low vaccination rates. That is entirely on Albertans, individually and collectively, RH, Calgary, AB
Good morning, Mark. I haven’t opined for a while cause I’ve been furiously trying to keep up with the news in today’s overwhelming ‘on demand’ information age!! The election that never should have been. The COVIDiots. The list is endless. You are so right - politics should never enter healthcare - but here we are, SB, Calgary, AB