Thanks for sharing, Catherine! I apply many of your tips and agree that they are super useful. Additional questions I ask myself quite often:
What is the goal I want to achieve? This is the question which helps me to structure my thinking and approach the most
Am I asking the right question? Next to regularly not thinking through all the options I have, I also realize often that I am not asking the question I really care about in the first place
Can I make a prediction about my decision? This helps me a lot to keep track of my decisions e.g., at cFactual we have a “prediction of the week” to calibrate ourselves on outcomes we expect to see, identify differences in reasoning about important topics among team members, …
Do I weigh all arguments/considerations equally or do I believe one argument is 10x more relevant than others?
Some tools for group decision-making we use:
Our google doc company template has as default drop-downs to always indicate the status of the document, time spent, what the stage of the document is (Strawmen, key arguments or flashed out document) and a section for a few words on epistemic status (“braindump/ 5min of desk research/ I am an expert/...”). This helped us a lot to remain focused and have higher quality discussions with a time investment of 20sec
We try to quantify our preferences, e.g., Instead of saying: I am in favour of option A, we aim to write: I am 55% in favour of A. This helps us quite often to make a judgement call without forward and backward writing of comments
If there are larger decisions I want to think through more rigorously, I quite often use this mental structure as a starting point (and then adapt it): Recommendation/conclusion incl. my certainty in the conclusion, alternative options, my arguments for the recommendation, my arguments against, key uncertainties, key assumptions, downside risks and predictions
Probably stating the obvious for many here: I think the CFAR handbook also has great prompts for people who are interested in the topic
Thanks for sharing, Catherine! I apply many of your tips and agree that they are super useful. Additional questions I ask myself quite often:
What is the goal I want to achieve? This is the question which helps me to structure my thinking and approach the most
Am I asking the right question? Next to regularly not thinking through all the options I have, I also realize often that I am not asking the question I really care about in the first place
Can I make a prediction about my decision? This helps me a lot to keep track of my decisions e.g., at cFactual we have a “prediction of the week” to calibrate ourselves on outcomes we expect to see, identify differences in reasoning about important topics among team members, …
Do I weigh all arguments/considerations equally or do I believe one argument is 10x more relevant than others?
Some tools for group decision-making we use:
Our google doc company template has as default drop-downs to always indicate the status of the document, time spent, what the stage of the document is (Strawmen, key arguments or flashed out document) and a section for a few words on epistemic status (“braindump/ 5min of desk research/ I am an expert/...”). This helped us a lot to remain focused and have higher quality discussions with a time investment of 20sec
We try to quantify our preferences, e.g., Instead of saying: I am in favour of option A, we aim to write: I am 55% in favour of A. This helps us quite often to make a judgement call without forward and backward writing of comments
If there are larger decisions I want to think through more rigorously, I quite often use this mental structure as a starting point (and then adapt it): Recommendation/conclusion incl. my certainty in the conclusion, alternative options, my arguments for the recommendation, my arguments against, key uncertainties, key assumptions, downside risks and predictions
Probably stating the obvious for many here: I think the CFAR handbook also has great prompts for people who are interested in the topic