Deliberative Decision-Making [Reference Article]
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
In almost all cases, whenever the framework talks about “decisions” or “decision-making,” it is talking about deliberative decisions.
Deliberative decision-making
Conscious, effortful, or intentional
Involves weighing options or alternatives and reasoning about their consequences
Slow, explainable, and resource-intensive (relative to non-deliberative decision-making).
Used to design structures, clarify expectations, and make purposeful choices
Non-deliberative decision-making
Automatic, instinctual, and often unconscious
Driven by habits, emotions, reflexes, and internalized norms
Fast, effortless, and responsible for most real behavior
Shapes how people actually act within a structure, regardless of what they intended to do
Explanation
For as long as people have been trying to understand how humans decide, we have drawn a line—sometimes faint, sometimes thick—between decisions made on purpose and decisions that happen before we even know they’re happening. This distinction runs through philosophy, psychology, law, spirituality, and management theory. And it matters far more for collaboration than most people realize.
This article outlines the difference between deliberative and non-deliberative decision-making, gives scenarios of each, traces the origins of the distinction, and shows how the Making Rules Matter (MRM) framework uses this split as a foundation for designing better structures.
When This Distinction Became Popular
Versions of this distinction show up in ancient philosophy, but it became especially salient in three eras:
Early Modern Philosophy (1600s–1700s):
Thinkers like Descartes, Locke, and Hume drew stark lines between conscious reasoning and passions or habits. Hume’s account in particular made it clear that most human behavior originates outside deliberate rational control.19th–20th Century Psychology:
Freud brought unconscious motivation into mainstream intellectual life; William James, John Dewey, and the pragmatists emphasized habit, embodied action, and pre-reflective response. Later, Herbert Simon’s concept of “bounded rationality” explained that decision-making is mostly non-deliberative because capacity is limited.Cognitive Science & Behavioral Economics (1970s–present):
Kahneman & Tversky’s dual-process models reframed the distinction for a modern audience. The language of “System 1” and “System 2” popularized the idea that intuitive processes dominate and analytical processes intervene only occasionally.
Across these intellectual eras, the same insight kept resurfacing: deliberative decision-making is very different than making unconscious “decisions” by acting on instinct.
For more read about the distinction between the Elephant and the Rider.
