Choosing well under risk
Strategic choice models, expert judgement and Delphi.
Two and a half hours on choosing well under risk: structuring strategic choice, matching decisions to certainty, risk and uncertainty, how experts decide under pressure, and the Delphi Method.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Complexity, decisions and innovation
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Senior leaders, strategy and policy leads and boards working in public or voluntary sector organisations
Overview
Much poor decision-making comes from using a tool built for certainty on a decision made under deep uncertainty. From the Immerse Seeing further, together, this Focus begins with structuring strategic choice through John Friend and Allen Hickling's Strategic Choice Approach, Jonathan Rosenhead's robustness analysis and Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann's cognitive mapping. It then turns to decisions under certainty, risk and uncertainty, with Herbert Simon's bounded rationality and satisficing. It ends with expert judgement: Gary Klein's recognition primed decision model, Captain Sullenberger on the Hudson, and the Delphi Method's anonymous rounds and controlled feedback.
Aims
The overall aim is to help leaders match the decision tool to the condition they face, keep options deliberately open where that is wise, draw on expert judgement well and accept a well documented disagreement as a legitimate answer rather than a failure to decide.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Use the Strategic Choice Approach, robustness analysis or cognitive mapping to structure a strategic choice with several interconnected decisions.
- Compare decisions under certainty, risk and uncertainty and choose a decision tool that matches the conditions, recognising when satisficing is enough.
- Apply the Delphi Method's anonymous rounds and controlled feedback to gather expert judgement on an uncertain question.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Describe the four modes of the Strategic Choice Approach and identify which mode a discussion is actually in.
- Distinguish certainty, risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, and use four questions to place a live decision on that spectrum.
- Explain Klein's recognition primed decision model and why expert recognition under pressure is not guesswork.
- Explain how anonymity, controlled feedback and iteration each remove a specific distortion in group judgement.
- Apply robustness analysis and cognitive mapping to choose and work with a group when the future cannot be forecast with confidence.
- Apply bounded rationality, the six-step decision process and cost-benefit analysis appropriately, including naming what has not been valued.
- Distinguish the three variations of the model and identify which one applies to a decision you face.
- Identify when a question suits Delphi and when analysis or fast recognition would fit better.
Built from 2 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Choices under uncertaintyStrategic choice models and decisions under riskBitesize · Strategic Thinking2 modules
- 02Calm heads, clear callsNaturalistic decision making and Delphi methodBitesize · Solving Complex Problems and Decision Making2 modules