Balancing decisions
Description
Why is deciding so hard?
Deciding is choosing. For example, between a fast but cramped sports car and a boring but spacious Volkswagen bus. Or between spending money on new factory machinery or developing a new product. Choosing is not easy. Because even if we know the pros and cons of all the options, how important is each one? Is space more important than top speed or vice versa? Is ensuring efficient production today more or less important than offering a good product tomorrow? Balancing different aspects is one of the most difficult tasks when making a decision. The Weighing Up workshop provides you with some tools to make this task easier.
Weighing Up
Weighing up what is important in a decision, and what is not, is often seen as so personal that little can be said about it ('there is no accounting for taste'). But research shows that the way people make trade-offs can be well described. What you can describe, you can also improve. During the workshop, you will learn how to avoid a number of elementary mistakes when making trade-offs. And you will gain insight into the way you make trade-offs yourself, so that you can better explain your trade-offs to other people involved in future decisions.
There are many tools available to help a decision-maker make a choice if the decision-maker has a clear understanding of the importance of the various aspects involved. There are also the necessary methods to find out how much importance decision-makers attach to those aspects. Unfortunately, those methods are mainly suitable for large groups or for routine (often repeated) decisions. You can very reliably measure how important the average car owner thinks fuel consumption is compared to top speed. You can predict with 70-80% certainty whether a doctor will declare a patient with certain symptoms sick or not. But for a 'unique' decision, where you cannot simply rely on past experience, and where the reliability must be greater than the 80% mentioned above (e.g. because a lot of money is involved), existing decision-making methods fall short. One reason is, among others, that they do not help decision-makers (and their advisers) to think carefully about the importance of the various aspects involved. The methods assume that decision-makers have already made those trade-offs, but they often haven't. And if they already have trade-offs in their minds, they can change from moment to moment
The workshop
The workshop consists of a short introduction to decision sciences and weighing plus a number of assignments that will give you a picture of the weighing process and how you yourself go through this process. Feedback will be given after each assignment and afterwards you will receive a generic elaboration of the assignments.
Participating in the workshop is a good way to get acquainted with the process of weighing things up. What you learn is directly applicable to decisions you have to make for your work or private life. The workshop is also a good basis for further training if you want to structurally improve the way you make decisions.
The workshop is given by Dr Hans Heerkens of the University of Twente. He researches consideration processes, especially in the aviation industry.
Speaker(s)
Dr. Hans Heerkens
Location
Drienerburght
Organiser
Eastern Region
Name and contact details for information
Elfride Dijkstra