Smart Choices. Howard Raiffa
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What do you most want to avoid?
• Consider the decision’s possible impact on others. What do you wish for them?
• Ask people who have faced similar situations what they considered when making their decision.
• Consider a great—even if unfeasible—alternative. What’s so good about it?
• Consider a terrible alternative. What makes it so bad?
• Think about how you would explain your decision to someone else. How would you justify it? Your answers may uncover additional concerns.
• When facing a joint or group decision, one involving family or colleagues, for instance, first have each person involved follow the above suggestions individually. Then combine the lists, using the varied perspectives to expand and refine first-take ideas. By initially freeing each person to search his or her mind without being limited by others’ thoughts, you’ll get a more comprehensive list that more accurately reflects everyone’s concerns.
Using these techniques and others of your own devising, you’ll accumulate pages of notes describing what you most care about in relation to the decision you face.
Step 2: Convert your concerns into succinct objectives. The clearest and most easily communicated form for objectives is a short phrase consisting of a verb and an object, such as ‘‘Minimize costs,’’ ‘‘Mitigate environmental damage,’’ and so on. (For an example of identifying objectives, see the case on pages 37–38.)
Identifying Objectives: Selecting a Primary School
Mary and Bill needed to select a primary school for their daughter, Kate. To provide a basis for identifying and evaluating the alternatives, each of them made a list of what they felt was important for Kate’s education. Then they combined their thoughts, easily completing, after about ten minutes, the following joint list of objectives:
• Learn the fundamentals.
• Enjoy school.
• Develop creativity.
• Develop discipline.
• Learn good work habits.
• Learn to work with other people.
• Participate in physical activity.
• Learn about different people.
• Be intellectually challenged.
• Know the joy of learning and knowledge.
• Participate in and develop an appreciation for art.
• Learn to function in our society.
• Develop options for the future (secondary schools).
• Develop lasting friendships.
• Deepen a commitment to basic values (honesty, helping others, empathy).
They followed the same two-step procedure to compile a second list, this time focusing on what they wanted from the school. In combining their two lists this time, however, they found an area of apparent disagreement: Mary had listed ‘‘No uniforms’’ and Bill, ‘‘Uniform required.’’
In discussing their reasons, Mary said, ‘‘I hate uniforms for kids. It reminds me of militarization. I think diversity of dress is much healthier.’’
‘‘But,’’ Bill countered, ‘‘you surely don’t want competition in dress. It’s not fair to the kids who can’t afford every new inthing.’’
They reconciled their positions by sorting out the essential element in each perspective. This effort yielded the following additions to their original list of requirements for a good primary school choice:
• Minimize annual school cost.
• Minimize travel time to school.
• Encourage diversity in styles of life (dress, interests).
• Discourage competitive behavior for material possessions (clothes, bikes).
• Encourage respect for and understanding of all kids, regardless of family circumstances.
Step 3: Separate ends from means to establish your fundamental objectives. Having drawn up your initial list of objectives, you now want to organize them. The challenge is to distinguish between objectives that are means to an end (having leather seats in your new car) and those that are ends in themselves (having a comfortable and attractive interior).
Separating means from ends is like peeling an onion. Each new layer looks different. The best way to do it is to follow the advice of the common Japanese saying ‘‘You don’t really understand something until you ask five times ‘Why?’’’ Simply ask ‘‘Why?’’ and keep asking it until you can’t go any further. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, uses the objective ‘‘Minimize emissions’’ for evaluating many proposed programs to reduce air and water pollution. But is this objective an end or a means? Let’s ask ‘‘Why?’’ and find out.
So why do they want to minimize emissions?
Because it will reduce pollutant concentrations.
Why is this important?
It will limit human exposure to the pollutants.
Why is this important?
Because exposure can damage people’s health.
And why is health damage an important concern?
Health damage just is important. It’s the end the EPA wants to arrive at; everything else is a means of getting there.
Asking ‘‘Why?’’ will lead you to what you really care about—your fundamental objectives, as opposed to your means objectives. Means objectives represent way stations in the progress toward a fundamental objective, the point at which you can say, ‘‘I want this for its own sake. It is a fundamental reason for my interest in this decision.’’ Fundamental objectives constitute the broadest objectives directly influenced by your decision alternatives.
Consider this example. Your initial notes on developing a plan for constructing your company’s new distribution center include the objectives ‘‘Minimize construction time’’ and ‘‘Minimize time needed to get permits.’’ You ask yourself ‘‘Why?’’ and realize that these are means objectives; they lead to the two fundamental objectives ‘‘Minimize time before the distribution center is operational’’ and ‘‘Minimize cost of the facility.’’
Your fundamental objectives depend on your decision problem. A means objective in one decision problem may be a fundamental objective in another. Suppose you’ve just turned 55, and you plan to retire in ten years, at 65. You face two related decision problems: how to invest your retirement funds now and what to do during your retirement years. In the first case, a fundamental objective would be to accumulate as much money as possible for your retirement. In the latter case, having money is only a means objective. Asking several ‘‘Why?s’’ will lead you to the fundamental objective: achieve and maintain a good quality of life.
Separating means and fundamental objectives is critical because both kinds of objectives play important but different roles in the decision-making process:
• Each means objective can serve as a stimulus for generating alternatives and can deepen your understanding of your decision problem. Asking how you might minimize construction time for the distribution center, for example, could lead to several good alternatives for shortening the time before the distribution center is operational, such as moving all needed construction materials immediately to the site.
• Only fundamental objectives should be used to evaluate and compare alternatives. Sure you