Decision-making is a black box

It’s amazing how many people don’t know how to make decisions, which is curious if we think of how many decisions, we are making every day in our private and our business life. Decision making is for most people a process of “guessing” or “betting” on an outcome, starting from what to eat in a restaurant to choosing a job or a life partner. A coherent decision-making process is mostly lacking and is often replaced by a story that provides sense in hindsight, meaning: people make up a story afterwards that seems to come up with a process, explaining to others – and themselves- how they decided afterwards. They think they have decided in a coherent way. This phenomenon is called “retrospective coherence”. Fun fact: that story depends a lot on the outcome of the decision: if a decision leads to success (the right ‘bet’) it tends to draw a completely different retrospective story than an outcome considered a failure. I will continue this exploration into decision making; drawing on different authors and frameworks for the, looking forward to shedding some light into the DMP-black box.