Deciding under uncertainty means choosing a course before you have the facts you would like, so the aim is not certainty but a decision you can adjust: pick the best option you can, say what you are assuming and what would make you change your mind, and look again when new information comes in. Waiting for complete information is itself a decision, and in a crisis it is often the worst one.
Part of Leadership Psychology in Crisis
Decision-making under uncertainty is acting on incomplete information while keeping the ability to correct course.
Waiting Is A Choice With A Cost
A leader who is unsure often waits for more information. Sometimes that is right, when a bit more scouting will clearly settle the matter. Often it is not: while the leader waits, the water runs lower, the weather turns, or the group loses confidence. Not deciding is a decision, and it should be judged by the same question as any other: what does it cost, and what does it buy?
Know What Kind Of Uncertainty You Have
Uncertainty comes in different kinds, and the right response differs.
- Missing facts that can be obtained. Is the north trail passable? Send someone to look, if the cost of looking is small.
- Facts that cannot be obtained in time. Will the stranger’s group be hostile? You will not know until contact. Decide how to cope with being wrong.
- Outcomes that are genuinely unpredictable. Weather, illness, other people’s choices. No amount of information removes them. Plan for a range.
Habits That Help
Step 1: Ask what happens if you are wrong. If the cost of a wrong decision is small or can be undone, decide and move. If it is large and permanent, slow down and gather more. This is the rule of thumb in the parent article, and When to Decide Fast vs Deliberate works it through.
Step 2: Prefer options that keep choices open. Moving camp a short distance first, or testing a water source before relying on it, leaves room to change. An option that cannot be reversed needs a higher bar.
Step 3: State your assumptions. “We are assuming the flood will crest by tomorrow.” Spoken aloud, an assumption can be checked and corrected by someone who knows better.
Step 4: Set a trigger for review. “If the river has not dropped by noon, we move.” A pre-agreed trigger stops the group drifting.
Step 5: Look back. After the event, ask what you knew, what you guessed and what the guess cost. The point is to improve the next decision, not to assign blame.
Two Reliable Ways To Go Wrong
People under stress overrate their own judgment and underrate how long things take. Both are well documented in decision research. A second opinion from someone who does not share your mood, and a deliberate effort to estimate time with a margin, both help. A practice drawn from research on expert teams, the pre-mortem, asks the group to imagine the plan has failed and list why. (The pre-mortem is associated with the psychologist Gary Klein; this is from memory and not rechecked.)
The earlier material for stressed individuals is a close companion: Good-Enough Decisions and The Three-Option Rule give simple limits on deliberation, and The OODA Loop describes repeating the cycle as the situation changes.
Common Mistakes
- Treating a decision as final when it was provisional. Say “this is our plan until we learn more”.
- Hiding the uncertainty from the group. It leaves people unprepared for the change (see Acknowledging Uncertainty).
- Letting one person decide everything. Include those with relevant knowledge, even for fast calls.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Communicating Decisions — telling the group what you chose and why
- Combine with: Decision Making — the governance side of documenting decisions