Rowan's Future of Choice

Have you seen my specs? The general needs a decision.

One of the most important missions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is to provide decision support to the combined Joint Task Force and  Component Commanders.

NATO has published a guide for operational analysts heading into the field. Among the optional field items are pyjamas [sic] and spare 'spectacles.'

Among the suggested decision support tools are Expert Choice and MS Excel. I admire soldiers such as the men in the photo who are using the best available tools for peace in situations that are not always ideal.
 

Rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper smothers rock

Takashi Hashiyama could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell his company's 20 million dollar art collection, so he used an ancient tool.

"Two experts from each of the rival auction houses arrived at Maspro's Tokyo offices, where they were shown to a conference room with a very long table and asked to sit facing one another, Mr. Rendell said. Each side's experts had an accountant from Maspro sitting with them.

Instead of the usual method of playing the game with the hands, the teams were given a form explaining the rules. They were then asked to write one word in Japanese - rock, paper or scissors - on the paper.

After each house had entered its decision, a Maspro manager looked at the choices. Christie's was the winner: scissors beat paper"

New York Times link.

10% of any market segment influences the decisions of the rest

The traditional way to make a decision was to listen to--and act upon--the views of 'opinion leaders' in our world. The age of those influential individuals is coming to an end. As a society, we no longer lean on our family minister, doctor, or company executive as the highest authority for guiding our life decisions. Somehow, they no longer seem credible or all-knowing. Our everyday decisions are influenced by 'opinion packages,' such as the groups we join or brand names we buy.

A new company named Community Analytics has a data-based approach for identifying and exploiting the relationship branches stemming from the small set of opinion leaders I say are obsolete.

I love how the company communicates its message. Worth checking out their demo, here. Home page is here.

Divination provides knowledge, but not action

The Yoruba people of West Africa--who now live all over the world--long ago devised a system, called Ifá, to help resolve problems and make decisions.

Many people from Yoruba regions believe there are deities who know our destinies from birth, and trained priests who can call on them to guide us through life and beyond.

An Ifá session begins with the person needing guidance, a priest, and three items:

• 16 palm nuts or shells in a cup or bag
• One tray with dust in it
• A ‘tapper’ instrument (See the photo)
  

To begin, the priest invokes the deity to witness the proceedings by tapping rhythmically on the tray in front of him with the pointed end of the tapper.

He then tosses the sixteen nuts in his left hand and attempts to grab the entire group with his right. If one palm nut remains in his left hand, he makes two vertical marks with his fingers in the dust on the tray. If two palm nuts remain, he makes one vertical mark.

After making eight successful casts, there will be two columns of four vertical marks in the dust, forming a configuration that represents one of the 256 possible signs, which the person and the priest interpret together.

The person with the problem or decision leaves the session with the confidence to take action for improving his/her life.

However, Ifá divination provides knowledge, but not action. Each session also results in an offering or a sacrifice of some kind. Action learning!

More about Ifá.

The ZoomAlbum and MindManager decision package

There are lots of great tools to help you make decisions. For brainstorming and prioritizing options, you can use anything from Post-it notes to sophisticated tools such as DecisionLens and the Thinking Dimensions tools by Kepner-Fourie.

Once you decide, you need a way to tell others about it. There are also lots of tools for spreading the word, from email to PowerPoint to videos.

I have successfully used two inexpensive tools to make and tell others about my team's decisions:

• Portable books I make myself using ZoomAlbum kits
• Information mapping software called MindManager

Together, they make a dynamite decision package.

ZoomAlbums are pocket-sized, hard cover books. You can print your own covers, or make plain ones. Here is a sample:

My information mapping software, MindManager, lets me quickly and graphically organize the pros and cons of any problem or issue. Below is a sample I made to help me discover new things I can do with ZoomAlbum. Each section of the map will print to a page in a ZoomAlbum I print. (Click to enlarge.)

The possibilities are almost endless. Check them out at: ZoomAlbum home page, ZoomAlbum at Amazon, and MindManager at MindJet.

You can also see a wireless proposal I made using ZoomAlbum here.

New comparison tools

One of the simplest and most effective ways to evaluate one option is to compare it with a second. This is hugely more effective than going with the first thing that comes to mind (a snap decision), or endless study of many options. (I previously covered this comparison technique in posts here about choosing from long lists using Excel; and here about police lineups; and here about forming opinions and personal biases.)

Most of us have used comparison tools when shopping for a digital camera or DVD player. There is now an ad-free resource network to compare social networking services, as well as dog breeds, instant messaging clients, and gaming sites.

Here is a screen snippet resulting from my request to compare Friendster, Lava Life and MySpace. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

Things to keep in mind when using such tools:

• Does the information appear to be correct and up-to-date?
• Does it appear to be independent, or is it skewed for some reason? (As the disclaimer says, "All information on this site is deemed reliable but not guaranteed and should be independently verified." Who has time for that?)
• Does the information cover what you really care about, such as privacy and trust?
• And finally, in the days and weeks after your decision, did it work out better than without the comparison tool?

CompareHangouts.com, at the The Compare Stuff Network, brought to you by the Plain Black Corporation.

ZoomAlbum

I love ZoomAlbum's do-it-yourself, pocket-sized books. Although marketed as 3-inch-by-3-inch photo albums (Windows/Mac), I use them for lots of unintended purposes:  user guides, scrapbooks, and even phone books.

Sometimes I create an album as a mindmap, then import it into ZoomAlbum. I even created a mindmap in a prior weblog post to show a few of the possibilities for supporting decision-making.

Check out a project management guide I made at their website. Thanks to the folks at ZoomAlbum!

Links: ZoomAlbum (go to the bottom of the web page); prior weblog post; MindJet's MindMap

Navigating

Steve Richards at his blog did a wonderful mindmap summary of Dan Pink's book, A Whole New Mind. I love mindmaps and I appreciate Pink's work. Steve's summary helped me to understand the gist of the book, and to decide to move on and read something else. But what experience am I missing? How could the mindmap have drawn me in to read more?

Books are like rivers; you can't experience them by looking at the map.

Thanks to Hobie Swan for pointing me to Steve's blog.

Hay River photo.

Take a quiz

Fill out a one-screen questionnaire and see what the software says. Fun and quick.  Here's part of my report.

Try the questionnaire yourself. Click here
Source link

Cow Culling Decision Support System

Here is a little bit of science to help Arizona cow ranchers. The university web site even has cost-of-mistake charts.

"This interactive Decision Support System (DSS) will provide recommended culling decisions generated by the current version of the model described below. The purpose of the DSS is to provide ranchers educational information on cow culling decisions." Link