Deciding with judgement
Strategic decision-making, bias and AI.
A focused two and a half hours on strategic judgement: tools for complex choices, deciding under uncertainty, bias in top teams and AI as an aid rather than a substitute.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Strategic Thinking
- 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, top teams and board members making strategic choices
Overview
Real public service decisions are messy, interconnected and made under political pressure. Deciding with judgement focuses on how strategic choices are made well. It introduces tools built for complexity, including Friend and Hickling's Strategic Choice Approach, robustness analysis and cognitive mapping, then separates certainty, risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, drawing on Herbert Simon's bounded rationality. It examines how Kahneman's two systems, anchoring, sunk cost and groupthink shape top team judgement, using Dr Jonathan Huish's Cranfield research. It closes on what AI changes for strategic decision-making and why more options still need human judgement.
Aims
This programme aims to strengthen the judgement of senior leaders and top teams, helping them match decision tools to the conditions they face, keep options open where uncertainty is deep, recognise bias in themselves and their boards, and use AI as an aid to human judgement rather than a substitute.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Distinguish decisions under certainty, risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, and choose decision tools that suit each of these conditions.
- Apply the Strategic Choice Approach, robustness analysis and cognitive mapping to structure a complex choice and decide what to leave open.
- Assess how bias, top team dynamics and AI shape strategic judgement, and use practical debiasing habits in your own decision forums.
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.
- Apply robustness analysis and cognitive mapping to choose and work with a group when the future cannot be forecast with confidence.
- Distinguish certainty, risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, and use four questions to place a live decision on that spectrum.
- Apply bounded rationality, the six-step decision process and cost-benefit analysis appropriately, including naming what has not been valued.
- Distinguish System 1 from System 2 thinking and identify when a strategic question is being answered by the wrong one.
- Describe the three practical shifts AI brings to strategy work and explain why none of them makes the choice for you.
Built from 2 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Choices under uncertaintyStrategic choice models and decisions under riskBitesize2 modules
- 02Judgement in a changing worldCognitive bias, judgement and AI in strategyBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Strategic Thinking topic, also sold whole as The strategic mind.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 2 hours 30 minutes, £69
- The whole topicImmerse, The strategic mind, 7 hours 30 minutes, £249. Already own the Focus? You pay £180.
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