Decision Making

Decision making is an area of interest I frequently return to. Last week I explained how I like to work to a new starter at the firm, and thought it would be a good opportunity to share more broadly.

Building a robust process that supports decision making has been crucial throughout my trading career, but I now find it helpful more generally in many areas of my life.

I outline my approach below. To me, it is both simple and comes naturally. However, I wonder how common such an approach is, given how often confusion arises.

Before I go through the individual steps, perhaps the most important aspect to emphasize is the difference between the steps in yellow, which focus on what we should do, and those in blue which concern how we should go about it. This helps form a clear division between before and after a decision has been made.

Steps in the process

Ideas

This stage is free and unconstrained – the objective is creativity

• Do not dismiss anything
• Be open to other people’s ideas
• Do not worry too much about practicality or attractiveness

 

Suggestions

Suggestions are ideas that are liked, or at least plausible – the objective is initial due diligence

• Intelligent pushback
• Alternative suggestions (and perhaps even completely new ideas)
• Plausibility analysis

(Note “suggestions” is plural i.e. still at the stage of multiple possibilities.)

 

Proposal
The objective here is sufficient detail needed to make a decision.

• Narrowed to a primary suggestion, or perhaps an examination of a small number of options.
• Key area is to highlight major issues/red flags
• No problem suggesting going back a stage for some more ideas and suggestions rather than moving ahead.

 

Decision

A clear moment and where the project transitions to a very different stage.

 

Implementation
Objective here is work out how to do something and actually do it

• Most people are far more comfortable at this stage

 

To illustrate the process, here is a trading example:

(1) Ideas

Let’s just list a few basic investment ideas:

Buy S+P

Sell S+P

Buy European equities

Buy EM equities

Sell US bonds

(2) Suggestions

We like the idea of long equity exposure
We narrow down to S+P and DAX as the prime candidates

(3) Proposal

After detailed analysis, the proposal from the analysis team is
“to buy $50m of S+P as soon as practical.”

(4) Decision

After review, the proposal is refined, and we decide to buy $75m of S+P exposure

(5) Implementation

At this stage, the process of ideas, suggestion, proposal, and decision can be repeated, this time for implementation. Thus, a decision could be to use S+P mini futures and execute within the first hour of the opening of the US cash market the next trading day.

 

 

What goes wrong?

Over the years, I observe that many people in a work environment show a preference for either the pre-decision “ideas and suggestions” zone or the post decision “implementation” zone, rarely both. Each style can be very useful, but I’ve learnt it’s important to be aware of the differences, to play to people’s strength and to avoid confusion.

Those who prefer implementation:

• Premature decision making

It’s very easy to start the process with a decision already made, skipping the supporting steps, with any subsequent analysis purely a rationalisation to present to others and ourselves, in other words confirmation bias.

• Rush to implementation

In the framework above, it is clear an idea is not a decision and also a suggestion is not a decision. In reality, what can sometimes happen is when I suggest an idea, people around me think I have made a decision and move straight to how we would implement. This is especially confusing when it turns out that those same people never thought it was a good idea! People often explain that previous bosses have strong opinions and just expect to get it done. In this respect, I have learnt to be very explicit to avoid causing confusion.

Those who prefer the ideas and suggestions stages:

• Lack of details

Preferring the positivity and creativity of the early stages, people often don’t value the details or due diligence required to actually make a decision. Red flags or major issues are critical to consider pre-decision, as once the decision is made, momentum makes it hard to go back again.

• Inability to drill down to a concrete proposal

We can always find another idea or another suggestion.
However there comes a stage of pragmatism in all decision making, when some suggestions need to be discarded, and others more deeply investigated to form a proposal.
This is also the stage where implementation considerations are important; but people who prefer “ideas and suggestions” may not pay sufficient attention to these and so it’s crucial to widen the team.

 

“Plan”

Note that I did not use the word “plan” above. This is because it is commonly used to describe a proposal and also relates to implementation. In fact, these stages share common materials; the details from the proposal will often cover some of the implementation. The crucial difference is one is before decision and the other is after.

Again, people used to working on implementation, can take the details involved in the proposal as indication that a decision has been make. The temptation to move the project along, rather that focus on any issues that may indicate a major mistake.

 

Conclusion

To make good decisions, it’s clear you need both types of people!

Having a team which excels at implementation is a wonderful thing, similarly having people around you that get energised by thinking about new ideas. But even more important perhaps, is making sure that you spend sufficient time and energy on both aspects and find a way to integrate the contributions of everyone.

Thinking about where you sit in the process above, being aware what kind of preferences you have, could be helpful to your career, making you much more effective within teams at work.