What is better, to do nothing? Or to make a bad decision?

A few days ago, a friend of mine asked me “what is better, to do nothing? Or to make a bad decision?” I answered “doing nothing is a decision to stay with the status quo, therefore rejecting the alternative of change. It doesn’t say anything about whether one decision is right or wrong.” Two weeks later, he had moved on to a promising new career in another country.

Indeed, to make a decision means that you have the choice between at least two, more or less equally attractive, alternatives. What makes an alternative, a course of action, more attractive than the other? A set of consequences, a set of likelihoods of occurrence of these consequences, and your degree of preference for each, based on your degree of tolerance toward risk.

Ah ok, yes, but how do you know you make a good decision? How will you measure your decisions?

If you were tempted to answer “outcome”, don’t! The outcome bias is one of the most pervasive and dangerous cognitive (sometimes motivational) biases in decision making – and there are many others. It sounds a little bit like this: “this guy must be really good, he made a fortune last year (he actually bet all his family’s savings on the 00 at the roulette, a horrible decision turning into a fantastic outcome).”

The real answer is: it depends. (I promise to write a short piece on this topic soon – stay tuned!)

But an even better question is: when do you measure whether you make a good decision? Answer: at decision point, at decision time, based on your particular circumstances, appraisal of uncertainties, appetence for consequences, and risk profile at the time.

What is sure, is that there is no good decision or bad decision per se. There are only better ones. A decision, the choice to go for an alternative, is always measured by comparison to other alternatives… to which you say Indeed, the word “decision” comes from the Latin “de caedere” which means to cut, to slice. When you decide, you cut yourself from all other possibilities under review at the time. Which means two things:

1. a decision is an irrevocable commitment of resources.

2. when you make a decision, you are always in a position to say No to one or several alternate courses of actions.

What does it mean for your negotiations?

When you negotiate, you are indeed navigating friendly or perilous waters, making decisions all along to reject or accept sets of alternatives proposed by your negotiation counterpart, and to propose sets of alternatives to them. If you decide for one course of action in the negotiation, you say No to all the others.

If you can’t say No, you are not deciding, you are not negotiating. No is the essence of decision making and the essence of negotiation.

No is the way to yes.