The Mediating Assessments Protocol

A method from the book "Noise", designed by Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony, "with noise mitigation as a primary objective".

It leverages their concept of "decision hygiene" to drive decision making, when the evaluation will require consideration and weighting of multiple dimensions for multiple options. It steers the behaviors of the decision making team to minimize the effects of noise on the quality of the decision.

Steps:

1. At the beginning of the process, structure the decision into "mediating assessments".

If individual options are like candidates, then the assessments are the different (and orthogonal) perspectives, that should be considered in the evaluation. This helps break a larger, complex evaluation into a series of independent pieces, or "mediating assessments".

2. Ensure that whenever possible, mediating assessments use an “outside view”

When options are assessed, compare them to base rates such that the set of options explored is wider (i.e. with historical or industry perspectives).

3. In the analytical phase, keep the assessments as independent of one another as possible.

Ask different people to drive the different assessments, when possible, and have them tackle them at the same time.

4. In the decision meeting, review each assessment separately.

This is to avoid jumping into a "final judgment" too early. Make sure all the assessments are understood prior.

5. On each assessment, ensure that participants make their judgments individually; then use the estimate-talk-estimate method.

As each assessment is presented, the group of decision makers (i.e. SMEs, stakeholders, etc.) listens silently, then provides an individual judgment (also silently) "into the record". Then a dialog is opened up to share opinions, indiivdual judgments, and perspectives as a group. Then, each individual has a chance to provide a judgment on the assessment again, either re-affirming, or changing their initial judgment.

6. To make the final decision, delay intuition, but don’t ban it.

After all the assessments have been presented, there will be a lot of data collected: the distinct judgments of each participant, bother before and after the dialog. Resist the temptation to do math, and average the scores somehow, to pick a winner. Instead, ask participants to pull from their intuition (they are well informed now) and offer final judgments. This might be in the form of a vote (i.e. as a board member) or a single choice by the decision maker (i.e. a leadership decision made with support of their leadership team).

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