Everyweek decisions

In a nutshell: describes the distinctive character of decisions managers or executives must make on a weekly basis.

It is a curious fact about the English language that the second most common word (“of”) occurs about half as often as the most common word (“the”); the third most common word occurs 1/3 as often as the most common word; and this pattern holds pretty well for the first 1000 words or more.

This pattern, known as Zipf’s Law, or more generally a power law distribution, occurs for a suprisingly diverse range of phenomena, from cities (the bigger they get, the fewer there are of that size) to earthquakes to price variations.

I don’t know of any any measurements to verify this, but it seems plausible that such a pattern would hold for business decisions as well. These decisions can be rated in terms of their level of significance, ranging from the trivial or everyday (Where should we go for lunch? Use “Yours sincerely” or “Cheers”?) to the truly momentous (Should we pay bribes to Saddam Hussein to sell more wheat?). In a given period, the typical manager or executive would make a great many everyday decisions, very few momentous ones, and a generous handful of “mid-sized” decisions.

Making everyday decisions would generally take only moments or at most minutes; momentous decisions might take months or years. Somewhere in between are decisions that the typical decision maker would make regularly but not everyday; she might make a few a week, and each would be thought about over a period of days or weeks. We might call these “everyweek” decisions (as opposed to everyday decisions).

Examples might be:

• Who should we hire for this job? (Should we fire Jones?)
• Should we revamp the current website, commission a new one – or what?
• Should we pay for a booth at the XX tradeshow?
• What legal structure should our US subsidiary have?

Everyweek decision problems tend to have the following properties:

• They involve considering a number of options, and “weighing up” the considerations bearing on these options.
• The weighing-up is done intuitively, i.e., without using any strict rule or calculation.
• Each option has various pros and cons.
• The pros and cons are heterogeneous, i.e., very different in nature.
• The pros and cons are generally qualitative; it is impracticable or even nonsensical to put numbers on them.
• The pros and cons may need to be backed up by evidence.
• Indeed, the pros and cons are often disputable; we may need to consider the arguments for or against them, and the debate may get quite complex.
• Generally not all the options, or pros and cons, are immediately apparent; it will take effort to “uncover” or generate them.
• Everyweek decision problems are made under time pressure.
• The time pressure rules out doing lots of research or investigation; we have to “make do” what what knowledge or beliefs we have already, or can access quickly and easily
• Everyweek decisions are collaborative, i.e., there are multiple people involved in thinking through the decision.
• These people may be remote, i.e. far away and in a different time zone
• The decision maker is “accountable” for the decision.
• In particular, the decision maker may have to justify the decision, i.e., explain the thinking behind it

It seems that the great majority of the non-trivial decisions the typical business decision maker has to make are “everyweek” in scale and nature.

I’m hoping, in subsequent posts, to discuss a number of issues related to everyweek decisions, such as:

1. How everyweek decisions are generally made;
2. What problems or “pain points” there are in everyweek decision making;
3. The lack of good tools to support everyweek decision making
4. The direction we (Austhink) are taking in addressing these issues.

Clichés have a silver lining

 The Telegraph is carrying a piece, At the end of the day, you’ve given 110 per cent, which mocks clichés – and implicitly, those who use them.  The piece contains ten or so winning entries in a competition to cram the most cliches into a short text.

Interestingly, the word “cliché” doesn’t appear in the piece – they use “infuriating phrase” instead.  Maybe there’s a subtle difference there.

It is mildly amusing, though all the cleverness and jollity soon becomes a bit tiresome.

Not so long ago, I would have read the piece with the attitude that one as reader is presumed to have – a kind of smug superiority.  Of course *I* wouldn’t use these clichés – only the dull, the vulgar, the crass, the stupid would rely on such banal and overworked turns of phrase.

However I feel a little different now.  Having been doing far more “business communication” – writing, and especially conversing – than I ever used to do, I find myself relying on clichés more than ever before.  Is this because my brain is atrophying the longer I spend away from the intellectual realms of philosophy and cognitive science?  Perhaps.

But I think there might be something else at work.  Communication is only in part a matter of sending information, contained in the meaning of one’s words, to another person.  It is also about establishing a kind of rapport – conversing with them rather than talking to them.  In that “conversing with”, clichés are very useful.  They are standard moves from a common repertoire, allowing conversants to synchronize their thoughts and attitudes.  Sure, instead of saying “we’ll be giving it 110%” you could say something like “we’ll be working like untenured academics” but the very originality of such a phrase is likely to throw some sand in the conversational gears.

There is a useful analogy with that universal business cliché, the standard handshake.  Such a dull way of greeting somebody!  Why not, instead, try shaking their hand side-to-side, or with one’s fingers clenched, or with a wet hand, or… or hold their arm, stroke their hair, touch their nose… Try any of these more imaginative alternatives, and you’ll instantly create the perception that you are at the very least a bit odd.  You’ll seriously impair your chances of a successful business relationship. People want to know that they’ll be able to “play the business game” with you, by standard rules, not your creative and unpredictable rules. Shaking hands in a more or less normal way is just an opening signal that you’re interested to see the game go well.

So give clichés a break.  There’s something to be said for them.