Consider walking into a room to find two sisters arguing over an orange. Each sister is working on a recipe that requires one orange. They ask you to act as a judge and without knowing anything else, you would most likely decide that a fair deal is to cut the orange in half.
Do you think your judgment would be different if you knew that one recipe required the juice of one orange while the other was a cake recipe that required the zest of one orange? I am sure it would.
For many of us, when faced with a decision or challenge, we are tempted to jump into action. However, when making important decisions and in order to optimize those decisions, it’s critical to balance efficient decision making with obtaining sufficient understanding.
One way to increase your understanding is by asking questions! This is a simple strategy that can be extremely powerful. In fact, at a recent negotiation training I attended titled the “NEGOTIATOR’S GPS™”, Gary Beal shared that in his experience, excellent negotiators ask ~ 2.5 times as many questions as average negotiators (reference: https://negotiator.net/training/). I believe the same applies to decision making.
Asking questions will help you uncover hidden information. Asking questions will also allow you to engage in a reflective (or system 2) thinking process versus an intuitive (or system 1) thinking process. System 2 thinking is what you want to engage for high-impact decisions. For more on system 1 versus system 2 thinking, you can read Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking Fast and Slow”.
Ultimately, asking questions enable you to generate more alternatives. Your decision can only be as good as your best alternative. As demonstrated in the hypothetical “Dividing the Orange” example, generating optimal alternatives will likely depend on your level of understanding and information you and your team are able to assemble.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. How many alternatives do you and your team typically generate and/or consider before making a decision?
