Walk the Week - Complex Decision Making and The Magic Roundabout

Avoiding other cars at the British institution, the roundabout, can be tricky. It is even worse in France who have adopted the “rond point”, but without the same Anglo Saxon discipline and tendency to observe the rules. Imagine then the additional complexity and risk posed by a roundabout with six circles in one. Swindon's “Magic Roundabout” is one of the most complex in the world. It has five smaller roundabouts where traffic goes clockwise, while vehicles travel counter clockwise around the sixth inner circle. It presents drivers with multiple complex choices which it is critical to get right, or you could meet drivers coming in the opposite direction. The normal rule of thumb give way to traffic from the right (left in France) does not always work.

As professionals making choices in our working lives can also be quite hard, not because we are indecisive, but because the very nature of our skill set means that we try to see all the angles and seek to weigh up multiple factors before determining the best course of action. For complex decisions like navigating the Magic Roundabout this is even more tricky.

It is also something we can I suggest consciously work at and improve. This article Important Decision-Making Skills: Definition and Examples comments that “Employers expect managers to make excellent choices based on facts and data rather than intuitions.” It then sets out some examples of decision making skills including problem-solving, using emotional intelligence, critical thinking, logical reasoning, leadership and team working and goes onto propose how to improve decision making.

While this blog The Most Important Decision-Making Skills (With Examples) sets out decision making skills commenting “Decision-making can be based on intuition, reasoning, or both. In any case, successful decision-making requires problem-solving, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and logical reasoning skills.” It observes that there are three main approaches to decision making:

·????????Intuition

·????????Reasoning

·????????A combination of both

However more complex decision making means recognising the increased challenges and adopting techniques to help. This World Economic Forum blog Six tips for taking complex decisions at work observes that:

?“Systems today are volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and the dominant dynamics are beyond our control. Making the right decisions or responding optimally is therefore far more challenging than previously.”

The post is based on a book on?Tackling Complexity: A Systemic Approach for Decision Makers?by Gilbert Probst and Andrea Bassi and recommends the following approaches:

·????????Identify the causes and effects of the problem across the social, economic and environmental dimensions.

·????????Use a multistakeholder approach

·????????Evaluate the impact across sectors and find a balanced strategy

·????????Evaluate the impact across actors and find an inclusive strategy

·????????Think long term and prioritize resilience

Delving even deeper into this topic Wikipedia describes “Decision Theory” as “a branch of applied probability theory and analytic philosophy concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical consequences to the outcome”.

While this New Scientist article Top 10 ways to make better decisions observes “Making good decisions requires us to balance the seemingly antithetical forces of emotion and rationality. We must be able to predict the future, accurately perceive the present situation, have insight into the minds of others and deal with uncertainty.” Its recommendations include:

·????????Don’t fear the consequences

·????????Go with your gut instincts

·????????Consider your emotions

·????????Play the devil’s advocate

·????????Look at it another way

One really useful technique in understanding and resolving complex conundrums and arriving at a decision is collaboration in conjunction with the use of visual aids. Brainstorm the problem and potential solutions with the key stakeholders on a flipchart using diagrams or a mind map. Having an image of the Swindon roundabout in your head will help navigate its circles!

And just when you start to see what could help our normal decision making process, along comes AI and chatbots like ChatGPT which can be consulted on anything including the material and factors necessary to make decisions – and who knows in future we could delegate decision making entirely to these software programs! I think fortunately perhaps that this is quite a long way off.

?Above all it is usually important to arrive at a decision. As Theodore Roosevelt said “In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”

And we can learn from decisions even if we don’t get it right every time - Mark Twain observed “Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.”

As Zebedee concluded at the end of each episode in the original children’s series The Magic Roundabout (after which Swindon’s roundabout is named) - “It’s time for bed”!