Tools for hard choices
Root cause, collaborative, multi-criteria and ethical decisions.
Half a day exploring the tools for contested, collaborative or ethically charged choices, from root cause analysis and expert judgement to making trade-offs visible.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 7 hours
- Where
- Solving Complex Problems and Decision Making
- Price
- £129
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
Leaders facing contested, collaborative or ethically difficult decisions
Overview
Tools for hard choices is a half day exploration of the methods leaders reach for when decisions become contested, collaborative or ethically charged. It covers design thinking and Kirton's adaptors and innovators, root cause analysis with the five whys and the fishbone diagram, and participative decision making tested against principles adapted from Habermas. Multi Criteria Decision Analysis, Klein's naturalistic decision making, the Delphi Method and decision fatigue follow, alongside utilitarian, deontological and virtue lenses for ethical choices. Two capstones read the Boeing 737 MAX, Birmingham's Oracle programme, Robodebt and the Columbia disaster through the full toolkit.
Aims
This programme aims to develop leaders who can choose the right tool for a hard choice, involving people genuinely, making trade offs visible, deciding well under pressure and owning ethical judgements openly, so that warnings already in the room find a route to change course.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Distinguish the decision tools suited to root cause, collaborative, multi criteria, time pressured and ethical decisions, and choose between them.
- Apply multi criteria analysis, the Delphi Method or ethical lenses to a live decision, agreeing weights before scores where relevant.
- Lead a decision process that surfaces warning signs and dissent, drawing on lessons from Boeing, Robodebt, Columbia and other cases.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Identify when the need itself is uncertain enough to call for design thinking rather than another technique.
- Apply the five whys to a recurring problem, continuing until the answer would genuinely prevent recurrence.
- Analyse a real decision failure by naming the specific frameworks that were missing or not empowered.
- Explain Klein's recognition primed decision model and why expert recognition under pressure is not guesswork.
- Explain the three mechanisms behind the paradox of choice and design a shortlist of three or four differentiated options.
- Analyse a decision failure by asking when somebody knew, what the warning met, and who would have had to lose.
Built from 6 parts.
7 hours of learning.
- 01Different minds, different routesDesign thinking and Kirton KAI problem solvingBitesize2 modules
- 02Getting to the root of itRoot cause analysis: five whys and fishboneBitesize2 modules
- 03What matters mostMulti criteria decision analysis case studiesBitesize2 modules
- 04Calm heads, clear callsNaturalistic decision making and Delphi methodBitesize2 modules
- 05Fewer choices, better choicesDecision fatigue and ethical decision makingBitesize2 modules
- 06Hard calls, honestly madeDecision making case studiesBitesize1 module
Keep going.
Part of the Solving Complex Problems and Decision Making topic, also sold whole as Clear calls in complex times.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereExplore, 7 hours, £129
- The whole topicImmerse, Clear calls in complex times, 13 hours 30 minutes, £249. Already own the Explore? You pay £120.
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. Prices per person. Read the full terms