Decision-Making Strategies: Considering a Spectrum of Outcomes

Learn how to make a decision when you face a spectrum of outcomes.

The third state of ambiguity you might face is one where there’s a spectrum of outcomes.

Let’s imagine you’re playing cards and I give you four cards, eight, nine, 10, and Jack of clubs. And you see your opponent’s hand and they have five cards, two of which are nines. Now there’s 44 Cards remaining in the deck. And there are 22 of them that might beat your opponent’s hand if I give you that card.

Would you take that bet?

Would you bet $100 on your hand and the outcome of that next card if you knew it might beat your opponent?

The value of additional information in a situation where there’s a spectrum of outcomes is very high. Knowing what that next card is, knowing what one more of your opponent’s cards is, can fundamentally alter your bet in that situation. Gathering more information from multiple sources is highly valuable and helps you reduce the ambiguity you face.

The corollary here is in a situation at the office where you have a spectrum of outcomes, gathering additional input from multiple stakeholders is going to help you arrive at a better decision because you can reduce that ambiguity.

Allow me to offer a situation. Let’s say you have five open positions on your team, and you’re trying to figure out how many candidates do you invite to come onsite to interview for those five roles? How many should you invite? Because it’s costly to invite people in to interview. Some of the sources of ambiguity you might face are what percentage of candidates will pass the interviews, from 25 to 75% might pass, that’s a standard range, but it’s a very broad range.

And if they pass, what percentage of them will actually accept the role? Let’s say you knew that’s between 25 to 100% are going to accept the job offer. And as you look at all of these variables, it’s still not clear how many people to invite onsite for those five roles.

What are some ways that you can reduce all this ambiguity you face? You might do some rigorous resume and phone screening of these candidates. You could pre-screen candidates for knockout factors. You may do a background check on them. You would hate to make a job offer to someone, only to find out on the back end that they have something in their past that will prevent them from taking the role.

You might ask candidates if they have other job offers that they’re pursuing, because that’s going to help you reduce that uncertainty around how many are going to accept the job offer. You could even ask people what their salary requirements would be if they received an offer from you. Again, trying to reduce that ambiguity around how many people will accept the offer if you make it.

The value of additional information in this situation is very high. There’s a spectrum of outcomes, 25 to 75% might pass, 25% to 100% may accept the offer, but those are very broad ranges. And the value of that additional information that you can gather during the process is going to help you make a better decision on the front end, in terms of how many people to bring in.

So if you face a situation where you have a spectrum of outcomes, remember, the value of additional information is very high and it’s very worth your investment in gathering that data.

Want to learn more about decision-making strategies? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning decision-making strategies. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!