Deci­sions tak­en with the tact of diplo­mats

Con­fused, I stare at my smart­phone and can’t believe how these peo­ple think. What has brought them to this deci­sion? Why don’t they see the (sup­pos­ed­ly) obvi­ous? Or should I ask: ‘What am I not see­ing?’

I’m sure we’ve all been there — and I’m not just talk­ing about elec­tions in democ­ra­cies.

There are count­less pub­li­ca­tions about deci­sion-mak­ing. And it is an ongo­ing top­ic in organ­i­sa­tions in par­tic­u­lar. Where should deci­sions be made? Who needs to be involved? Can ‘deci­sion-mak­ing’ be seen as a process? How do we arrive at quick and — hope­ful­ly — cor­rect deci­sions? Or do we need coura­geous deci­sions in order to be fit for the future?

At PerSens, we believe that deci­sions in organ­i­sa­tions should be made prompt­ly and as close as pos­si­ble to the point of action or issue. For this to suc­ceed, oth­er para­me­ters need to be tak­en into account. One, for exam­ple, is the ques­tion of con­text: how well do the deci­sion-mak­ers know the con­text?

How­ev­er, it is also essen­tial to know which thought mod­el the deci­sion is based on.

One mod­el is the pure ‘cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis’, which is all too often the sole mea­sure of all things, espe­cial­ly in the eco­nom­ic way of think­ing. Alter­na­tives are analysed and eval­u­at­ed based on their ben­e­fits. This can be seen as a sim­ple points sys­tem. The alter­na­tive with the high­est num­ber of points wins. In a crit­i­cal sense, it is not even a deci­sion, but sim­ply a process with a clear pro­ce­dure.

The log­ic of appro­pri­ate­ness is anoth­er deci­sion-mak­ing mod­el. We ori­en­tate our­selves on our envi­ron­ment. We ask our­selves (uncon­scious­ly) what deci­sions my col­leagues approve of, what norms and con­ven­tions apply in the deci­sion-mak­ing envi­ron­ment, what is expect­ed of me in my role. This form of deci­sion-mak­ing is based on our social­i­sa­tion, on tra­di­tions and on what we have learned. In a sta­ble envi­ron­ment, where the same tra­di­tions and cus­toms apply, we do well with this form, do not stand out and are on safe ground.

But what does a thought mod­el for deci­sion-mak­ing look like when nei­ther ana­lyt­i­cal pro­ce­dures nor sta­ble social cer­tain­ties are avail­able? In this con­text, Mar­tin Korn­berg­er asks in his book ‘Strate­gies for Dis­trib­uted and Col­lec­tive Action — Con­nect­ing the Dots’ what the deci­sion-mak­ing process of diplo­mats looks like. He answers this ques­tion with ‘tact’.  

I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the fol­low­ing sec­tion:

Like judge­ment or humour, tact does not fol­low any rules or prin­ci­ples. Tact has to do with the unique­ness of a sit­u­a­tion, with the speci­fici­ty of a par­tic­u­lar con­text, and there­fore can­not be sum­marised in abstract prin­ci­ples. It is intu­itive, and by engag­ing with the sit­u­a­tion, it feeds on cog­ni­tion (under­stand­ing a sit­u­a­tion) and feel­ing (read­ing a space).  (Korn­berg­er, 2024)

I would like our deci­sions to be much more char­ac­terised by this spir­it. It is impor­tant to endure con­tra­dic­to­ry dynam­ics, to per­ceive the ‘in-between’ and thus to place the expe­ri­ences of the past in the con­text of a future to be explored. 

I hope that in future I can look at my smart­phone in amaze­ment and be inspired by ‘tact­ful’ peo­ple who have learnt to make deci­sions for the VUCA world.