Decision = Felt Sense of Commitment [REFERENCE]

Note: “Reference Articles” are more technical and provide nuanced detail on concepts that would disrupt the flow if I had to explain them every time. They are also evolving documents and may include half-baked ideas or notes for future development.

Summary

A decision is equal to the agent’s felt sense of commitment, or the group’s shared sense of commitment. This is only in reference to deliberative decision making not non-deliberative.

Explanation

The idea here is that when I was considering my four types of group decision making model, I kept having to circle around the question, “When exactly is a decision made?” For example, we can sit down and talk about where we’re going to go for lunch, and we talk and talk and talk, and somewhere in that conversation the decision is made, but it rarely (if ever) manifests clearly by declaring something like, “And henceforth we shall both commit from this moment forward to Buffalo Wild Wings.”

This of course would make it easier and there are some really important examples of how this actually DOES happen like in the Holacracy governance meeting process, but they are more the exception. With that said, the whole point of my decision making model is to emphasize the importance for the group in recognizing these moments for themselves, whatever shape they may take.

In other words, the main consideration of the Encoding aspect is distinguishing the boundary between non-binding information and a binding decision.

With all of that said, I think I have my definition that sufficiently works for my needs but also (maybe) illuminates other models, approaches, and practices, which is to say: a decision is equal to the agent’s felt sense of commitment (or agents’ shared sense of commitment).

But if we go back to the decision about where to eat, we can see that we could “decide” to go somewhere, then 5 mins later change our minds. And then 5 mins. change it again. And if we are to distinguish “decisions” from “actions” as I think it’s helpful to do, then we need a criterion for a decision even if it is trumped by another decision later.

The point of this definition is simply to describe what actually happens in our experience that would make the term “decision” significant when held in contrast to anything else that may be happening.

The challenge of course with deliberative decisions, is that we deliberate on them. So we are immersed in information, but this framework is constantly pointing out and trying to get people to see that there is a critical (or helpful) distinction to make between descriptive stuff and prescriptive/binding stuff.

This connects to the idea of a tension in that they are both grounded in subjective experience. This continues this frameworks theme (or perspective) or analyzing Lower-Left quadrant phenomena from Upper-Left quadrant experience.

No doubt this needs to be described better, but I wanted to at least get down some notes on it while I’m thinking about it.