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Make Better Business Decisions

Decision-making in today's environment is difficult, and new managers in R&D and other technical positions are often shocked at the lack of systematic decision-making they find in their interactions with upper management and their peers in other parts of the organization. However, there is a well-tested source of insight into how to improve the decision-making in business: the scientific method. Although it has revolutionized our lives and the ability to manipulate our material world, the scientific method has not been widely adapted for business executives. Nevertheless, we believe it can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making for executives, research managers, and business leaders in general. In this article, we first examine the typical decisionmaking environment in organizations, highlighting the challenges executives face in their quest for better performance. Next, we introduce some of the basic tenets from the scientific method and describe how they can play a role in overcoming several of the key decisionmaking deficiencies. We then describe a five-step process that can assist in the implementation of scientific method techniques in daily decision-making, illustrated by a case study relating to new technology development. Challenges Executives Face Three key macro-level elements that differentiate the daily decision-making of today include information overload, shareholder pressure, and shortened business cycle time: * The search tools in use for problem solving by executives at most companies today yield a quantity of information that can be overwhelming. This situation has increased the importance of knowledge management skills to sort the data, identify what is truly relevant, and then to create value from it. * Shareholder pressure, a result of the rise in worldwide capital markets, has led to a relentless drive to achieve short-term financial results, often at the expense of long-term considerations. A number of well-known corporate failures may have resulted from the pressure to achieve consistent growth at any cost. * Finally, the time-to-market and overall business cycles have shortened to a level unimaginable 50 years ago. Decisions must be made faster than ever before (1). Ultimately, decision-making is done on an individual level. Alarmingly, much of the research suggests that humans are extremely limited in their decision-making abilities. For example, "bounded rationality" is a concept used to describe specific cognitive limitations of humans to process information and make sense of complex environmental conditions (2). Essentially, our rationality is our tool for decision-making that relies on simplistic and routine categorization systems to deal with otherwise overwhelming situations. This approach can result in rational decisions, but often fails to use relevant information not within those bounds. One major problem in organizational decision-making is the lack of objectivity. "Intellectual honesty" is a hot topic as companies struggle to increase the ethical nature of their financial reporting. Another common application would be the setting of decision agendas and more importantly, interpretation of data, based on confirmation of pre-set planning without adequate consideration of disconfirming evidence. Enter the Scientific Method Three key concepts impacting the subjectivity of decision-making include invalid assumptions, data filtering and representativeness (3). The individual-level constraints often manifest themselves in decisions that are not adequately objective, are inefficient and lack generalizability. The scientific method, on the other hand, attacks each of these issues specifically, as we describe next. Intrinsic to American management systems are practices that discourage strategic and long-range investments. By expensing research expenditures, they become vulnerable to cost-cutting. …