It’s believed that people make close to 35,000 decisions a day. Most of them are made on autopilot while many others are simple such as choosing what to wear or where to go for coffee. But if you are a decision-maker at a company, you are forced to make decisions every week that could be a masterstroke or a catastrophic failure.
There has never been an easier time to start a business with all the free information accessible. For this same reason, it’s a nervy time to be a decision-maker. The competition is relentless. Things change fast, as industries are rapidly evolving or being wiped out completely. All while people expect companies to operate without harming society, the environment, or the planet in pursuit of success.
There are many plates to spin, so it’s no surprise that even the biggest corporations are still making poor decisions.
How do companies make decisions today?
Many things are taken into account before a decision is made. There will be spreadsheets, reports, and specialist advice sought. Then, there is likely to be discussions around the best path to take. A decision-maker might feel confident at this point that they have covered all bases. That might have been the case a few decades ago, but not today.
Spreadsheets and reports are helpful but they are based on the past. That’s not enough when you are making decisions to help you succeed today, tomorrow and long into the future. Decision-makers may be smart, well-informed, and experienced but ultimately they are still making decisions on gut feelings based on the data available.
People need help to make decisions:
- What if a decision-maker has misinterpreted the data? (Which understandably happens as there’s an endless amount to absorb.)
- What if they are making decisions unaware of crises brewing overseas that will unquestionably affect their decisions negatively?
- What if their decision achieves the short-term objective but comes at the cost of a big-picture objective?
- What if one of the many cognitive biases, fears, or doubts has negatively influenced the judgement of the decision-maker that day?
Companies are drowning in data as they wrestle with the already difficult task of making decisions. Data was supposed to help companies. In some cases, it does. But startups and corporate giants are still experiencing costly setbacks due to poor decisions. It’s clear that data alone isn’t enough.
Even if a decision-maker was to return the best possible outcome, they are likely to have spent many hours researching beforehand. According to Forrester, teams spend 48 minutes waiting on decisions for every hour they spend working. That’s 3.5 hours a day spent waiting around. This makes you wonder, how much time, money, and frustration is this costing companies each year?
Decision Intelligence has Become Essential for Businesses to Succeed in Today’s Business Landscape
As aforementioned, spreadsheets and reports are based on the past but that’s not to say that they aren’t relevant or useful; they are. Decision-makers just need guidance on the future so that they can navigate through the blind spots, knowledge gaps, and biases. Decision intelligence offers this – at a blistering pace that companies have never experienced before.
Once it learns what your objectives are, decision intelligence generates millions of simulations to model the future. Within seconds, it can list decisions and the outcomes that they will produce. Everything from interest rates, global crises, to foreign policy are taken into account to show you the decisions that will help you achieve your objectives.
This is music to decision-makers’ ears. No longer do they need to spend hours/days researching before making a decision – or ruminating about it afterwards in fear that a superior will demand an explanation. They can simply test decisions before they make them, making it easy for anyone to understand – whether they are data-savvy or not – why a decision was made.
Decision intelligence makes achieving objectives, reducing waste and boosting ROI much simpler for companies of all sizes. Not only does it help companies make better decisions for their customers, society and the planet – it also helps its users raise awareness in areas they might not have considered before.