Art & Science of Decision-Making

John Debrincat
Apr 22
11 min read

Updated: Apr 24

Is Decision Making an Art, Science or just Luck

What is the most important skill that you need to succeed in business and in life generally? My answer might be controversial and I can already hear the howls from the management gurus.

The most important skill is - DECISION MAKING - or How to Make a Decision.

Every day, each of us makes countless decisions using the art and science of decision making, from the mundane choice of what to eat for dinner to split-second judgments that can be life changing. Business executives, managers, frontline staff, and even motorsport drivers barrelling down a track at 250 km/h all share this common activity of decision-making.

The scale and stakes vary, but decisions are everywhere. And while a family dinner choice won’t carry the same consequences as a CEO’s strategic move or a race car driver’s high-speed manoeuvre, they all have one thing in common, every decision sets change in motion. Whether big or small, each decision nudges the future in a new direction.

Decisions Big and Small From Dinner to High-Speed Drama

We often categorise decisions by their impact. On one end are small decisions, like selecting tonight’s menu or scheduling tomorrow’s meeting. On the other end are high-stakes decisions, a company’s pivot into a new market, or a motorsport driver deciding whether to brake or overtake at high speed. Yet even the smallest decision can have a ripple effect. Choosing a healthy dinner might improve your mood and productivity, just as a quick choice on the factory floor might avert a minor crisis. All decisions cause change, however slight, and recognising this is key to taking them seriously.

We see good and bad decisions play out in real time when watching motor racing like the Formula 1. Recently in a race we saw two drivers each make a decision in a split second of time. The two decisions meshed together to decide the outcome of the race. Did the winning driver use magic to control the decision outcome or art and science?

Some decisions also come with a timer. Consider a scenario on the road, a child darts out in front of your car, you must decide instantly to brake or swerve. There’s no time for careful analysis you act on instinct, almost on muscle memory. High-performance environments illustrate this vividly. Professional race drivers or fighter pilots spend years drilling emergency manoeuvres so that in the heat of the moment, the right decision is an automatic reflex. Research on experienced firefighters shows that experts often intuitively recognise what to do without comparing options, their first idea is usually the only one considered, “their thought process akin to the muscle memory of a trained boxer”. In business, too, crises demand rapid action guided by training and experience. If you’ve cultivated your judgment through practice, your gut instinct (your “System 1” thinking in Daniel Kahneman’s terms) can often serve you well. Kahneman, a Nobel laureate, famously described System 1 as our fast, instinctive thinking mode, and System 2 as the slower, analytical mode. The trick is knowing when to trust your gut and when to engage in deeper analysis.

Need for Speed - the OODA Loop

When time is short and stakes are high, having a framework for quick decision-making can be a lifesaver. One such model, born in military aviation and now used in business, is the OODA Loop – which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It was developed by Air Force Colonel John Boyd to help fighter pilots make split-second decisions in dogfights. The core idea is simple: rapidly cycle through observing the situation, orienting (understanding your context and options), deciding on an action, and acting, then repeat. This continuous loop encourages agility and learning. By the time your competitor or challenger is still figuring out what happened, you’re already onto the next cycle. Some people do this by instinct, or muscle memory, it can be learned and repeated.

Companies facing fast-changing markets have embraced the OODA Loop as well. It’s a way to stay ahead of the curve by quickly processing information and adapting. The key is to train your team (and yourself) to run through these stages swiftly without getting stuck. In practice, that means gathering what info you can (Observe), putting it in context and dispelling biases (Orient), making a call (Decide), and executing with resolve (Act), all in one fluid sequence. Over time, the OODA Loop can become second nature, not a formal checklist, but an instinctive habit for rapid decision-making.

Why Don’t We Learn Decision-Making

Can Decision Making be taught like maths or grammar

Despite the importance of good decisions, it’s surprising how rarely we teach decision-making as a discipline. We tell our children to “make the right decision” but do we tell them how? We train people extensively in technical skills, finance, marketing, operations, yet we often leave the actual decision process to personal intuition or on-the-job osmosis. Think back to your own childhood or education. Were you ever formally taught how to make a decision? For most of us, the answer is no. Experts have pointed out that this is a missed opportunity.

Could teaching people how to make decisions be good for society? Some forward-thinking programs and leadership courses are starting to address this gap, but in many organisations, employees climb the ranks by learning from experience (and often, by making mistakes first).

The result is that many leaders rely on a patchwork of trial and error, gut feeling, and whatever frameworks they’ve stumbled upon. On one hand, experience is a great teacher over years, you accumulate patterns and lessons that improve your judgment. On the other, without conscious training, you might repeat the same decision biases or fall into the same traps as those before you. Recognising that decision-making is a skill, one that can be studied and improved is a pivotal mindset shift. It opens the door to using tools and methods to make better choices consistently, rather than just hoping your experience will carry you through every tough call.

Judging Decision Quality, Not Just Outcomes

How do we usually judge a decision?

Often, by its outcome. As kids growing up when you did something a bit dumb you often heard “that was a bad decision”. What the hell! Then tell me was the good decision was. If the result is a success, we get a pat on the back for a “good decision”; if things go poorly, we lament the “bad decision.” But in reality, outcomes don’t always reflect decision quality. A poor decision can luckily lead to a positive outcome, and a sound decision can sometimes result in failure due to bad luck or factors outside our control. In the world of professional poker (and business strategy), there’s a term for this confusion: “resulting,” meaning we equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its result. It’s a cognitive trap that can mislead leaders.

Imagine you took a well-researched gamble on a new product launch. You did all the homework; customer research, market analysis, risk mitigation, but a freak change in regulations sank the product. The outcome was bad, but was the decision wrong? According to decision scientists, whether a decision is good or bad depends on how we make it, not on the outcome. If you made the best choice with the information available, it was still a good decision that simply didn’t pan out this time. Conversely, consider someone who cuts corners or ignores warning signs on a project, yet somehow everything works out okay in the end, that doesn’t magically turn their poor decision process into a good one (they got away with it by luck).

Embracing this distinction has a powerful effect on how we lead and learn. It means we should evaluate decisions based on the soundness of the process:

Did we gather relevant information?
Did we consider alternatives?
Did we account for uncertainties and our own biases?

These questions matter more for long-term growth than the one-off result. Over time, consistently high-quality decision processes will yield better outcomes on average. In practical terms, this mindset encourages post-decision reviews in your team: when a project ends, discuss not just; “Did we win or lose?” but “Did we make the decision the RIGHT way?” This builds a culture that values learning and continuous improvement over simple hindsight.

Tools and Frameworks for Better Decision-Making

Knowing that decision-making can be improved, what tools or frameworks can professionals use? Fortunately, there are many, ranging from simple checklists to sophisticated analysis models. So what framework do you use now to make decisions?

Decision Trees:

When facing a complex choice with many possible outcomes, a decision tree is a powerful visual aid.

What is a decision tree? It’s essentially a flowchart of decisions and their possible consequences. You start with a main decision node (a question or choice point), then branch out into possible options, and from each option, branch into possible outcomes (often including probabilities or costs/rewards). Decision trees help you visually map out the potential outcomes, costs, and consequences of a complex decision.

For example, if you’re considering launching a new product, a decision tree could lay out branches for high demand vs. low demand, different pricing strategies, and various investment levels, showing what each combination might lead to. This technique forces you to consider scenarios methodically and can even allow numerical analysis of the expected value of each choice. Business schools and analysts use decision trees to bring clarity to choices by highlighting paths, risks, and rewards in a structured way. The next time you face a multifaceted decision, try sketching a simple decision tree it might reveal insights (like a particularly risky branch) that you hadn’t fully appreciated in your head.

The OODA Loop:

We touched on this earlier in the context of speed, but even outside of fighter jets, the OODA Loop can sharpen your everyday decision-making. It trains you to cycle quickly through assessing and responding. In a business meeting, for instance, you can apply OODA by first Observing the data or opinions on the table, Orienting by understanding how it fits with your goals and filtering out biases, Deciding what direction or proposal to support, and then Acting – perhaps by voicing that proposal or implementing a test. Then, observe the reaction and results, and go through the loop again. This approach keeps you from getting stuck in analysis-paralysis because there’s always an action-forward mentality. It’s particularly useful in dynamic environments (think of a crisis management team or a sales negotiation) where you must remain agile and responsive. The OODA framework reminds us that decisions are not one-and-done; in fluid situations, we keep updating our decisions as new information comes (just as a pilot adjusts mid-flight). For leaders, encouraging an OODA mindset means empowering your team to make quick calls, learn, and iterate, rather than waiting for perfect information.

Heuristics and Checklists:

At the opposite end of detailed analysis are heuristics, simple rules of thumb that guide decisions. We all use heuristics, consciously or not. For example, the 80/20 rule (Pareto principle), focusing on the 20% of factors that will drive 80% of the impact is a heuristic that can cut through indecision by directing attention to what matters most.

In daily management, a heuristic might be something like “If a decision will take less than 2 minutes, just do it now,” (a popular rule to avoid procrastination). Heuristics are part of our System 1 thinking: they’re fast and frugal. The upside is they save time and mental energy, which is why busy professionals rely on them. The downside is that heuristics can introduce biases. For instance, an availability heuristic (judging an event as likely based on how easily you can recall an example of it) might make a manager overestimate the risk of a rare but recent problem, while neglecting more common issues.

The key is to use heuristics as helpful shortcuts but double-check critical decisions with a more analytical lens to ensure you’re not being misled by a bias. Another simple tool is decision checklists, a short list of questions to run through before finalising an important call. Your checklist might include items like “Have I considered at least two distinct alternatives?”, “What assumptions am I making, and are they supported by evidence?”, “Have I consulted someone with a different perspective?” Checklists (much like a pilot’s pre-flight list) help ensure you’re not missing a crucial step in your decision process. They are easy to implement and can dramatically improve consistency.

Encouraging Better Choices at All Levels

While individual tools and frameworks are valuable, it’s also important to foster a culture that values thoughtful decision-making. Leaders set the tone. If you penalise every poor outcome, team members will become risk-averse and hide mistakes and innovation will suffer. But if you distinguish between a bad outcome and a bad decision, you encourage smart risk-taking. Make it clear that a well-reasoned decision will be respected, regardless of outcome, and that what you care about is the learning gained, and the process used.

Encourage your team (including frontline staff) to speak up about decisions. Often, the people closest to the action have critical insights for example:

the customer support rep might have a heuristic for handling irate customers that could be shared across the team;
the factory worker might have an intuitive warning about a process that managers overlook.

By empowering employees at all levels to make decisions and contribute to decision processes, you create an organisation that is more agile and responsive. A key part of this is providing feedback and coaching. When someone makes a decision, especially a big one, debrief it:

What went into it?
What can we learn?

Over time, these practices build stronger decision muscles across the organisation.

Turning Insight into Action

Becoming a better decision-maker is a journey one that combines self-awareness, practice, and the smart use of frameworks. Start by reflecting on how you make decisions today. Do you rush into a choice on instinct when you shouldn’t? Or, do you sometimes overthink trivial decisions, burning energy that could be saved for bigger battles? By identifying your tendencies, you can apply the right tool at the right time, perhaps a quick heuristic for the small stuff and a more structured approach for the big calls.

many animals make decisions its part of their DNA

Many birds and animals, and some scientist even think plants, make decisions that mean life or death. For some it's built into their DNA, there is no formula that is used to predict an outcome. Remember that every decision, big or small, counts. Each is an opportunity to steer toward a better outcome, or to learn something valuable. In the fast-paced world of business (and life), we won’t always have the luxury of time or complete information. But we can control our approach. We can train like the race car driver to react swiftly when needed, and we can think like the chess player when there’s time to ponder several moves ahead. We can teach our teams that making decisions is not just a responsibility, but a skill that improves with mentorship and reflection.

Ultimately, great leaders and professionals distinguish themselves not by avoiding decisions, but by embracing them boldly and intelligently. They know when to trust their gut and when to consult the data. They learn from decisions that went wrong without falling into despair or blame. And they continuously refine their decision-making playbook adding new frameworks, dropping old biases in the pursuit of better results. By treating decision-making as the professional craft that it is, and by encouraging a culture of thoughtful decisions, you set the stage for consistent success. The change you create with each decision might start small, but over time, it becomes your legacy of purposeful leadership one decision at a time.

Can AI play a part in decision-making?

AI can significantly enhance human decision-making, particularly in business, by providing tools and insights that allow executives and managers to make informed, timely, and effective choices. AI can also be integrated into systems to enhance the decision-making process in real-time. Here are some examples and we will look at the uses of AI in decision making in a future article:

Data Analysis and Insight Generation
Enhanced Speed and Responsiveness
Reduction of Human Bias
Simulation and Scenario Planning
Continuous Learning and Adaptation
Automating Routine Decisions
Enhanced Decision Frameworks

The Human and AI Working Together

AI supports and complements human decision frameworks like OODA loops or decision trees. By providing real-time, data-driven input, AI enhances the speed and reliability of decisions made within these frameworks.

Example: AI analytics can provide instant orientation insights in the OODA loop, accelerating response time during crises or high-stakes negotiations.

Ultimately, the strongest model is a partnership between human judgment and AI precision. Humans provide context, ethics, and nuanced understanding, while AI delivers speed, objectivity, and analytical depth. Together, they create more informed, effective, and balanced decisions crucial in the modern, fast-paced business landscape.

Incorporating AI into decision-making isn’t about replacing human judgment, it’s about amplifying its effectiveness, consistency, and agility.