Choosing By Advantages

About six months ago my book, Choosing by Advantages: How to Make Sound Decisions, debuted. I penned the book as I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of making decisions with CBA. It’s been a game-changer in my life, both at home and at work. It’s helped my project teams think through and align on better designs and buildings for our clients.

When executed properly, along with good facilitation skills, it results not only in better decisions but decisions where all stakeholders can understand why those decisions were made, even if the results are not the same as their personal preference.

I’m pleased to share in this blog some high-level concepts and frequently used methods for CBA….and hopefully spark your interest to implement CBA for your teams.

What is Choosing By Advantages?

Choosing By Advantages (CBA) is a decision-making system developed by Jim Suhr in 1986 while he was working for the US Forest Service. Underpinning the system is the Fundamental Rule: “Decisions must be based on the importance of advantages.” The CBA system includes definitions, models, and principles, in addition to tools, techniques, and methods of decision making. There are methods for all types of decisions, from the simplest to the most complex.

Sound decision making, the foundation of the CBA system (and the topic of my book) is a collaborative and transparent way to make decisions amongst any group of stakeholders. Sound decision making has four cornerstone principles:

• The Pivotal Principle – decision makers must learn and skillfully use sound methods;
• The Fundamental Rule of Sound Decision-Making – decisions must be based on the importance of advantages;
• The Anchoring Principle – decisions must be anchored to relevant facts; and
• The Methods Principle – different types of decisions call for different sound methods of decision-making.

When CBA is done well, it results in collaboratively made, sound decisions that have concise and transparent documentation. The documentation shows how and why the decision was made the way it was. This is helpful when sharing the decision with others, the rationale can be clearly understood. It is also helpful when there is new information or a new stakeholder, and the decision needs to be revisited or updated.

CBA includes standard language that is used throughout. The language is not necessarily anything that is ‘unfamiliar’ to people but is concisely and consistently used. Here are the key terms to know:

• Alternative – People, things, or plans from which one is to be chosen are called alternatives. They are also called options. *in careful usage they are never called choices.
• Attribute – A characteristic, quality or consequence of one alternative (one person, one thing, or one plan) is called an attribute. *the key word is one.
• Factor – Elements or parts of a decision. Factors contain data that are required for making a decision.
• Criterion – A standard, rule, or test on which a judgment or decision can be based is called a criterion. A criterion is a decision that guides further decision making (criteria is plural).
• Advantage – An advantage is a benefit, gain, betterment, or improvement. It is a difference between the attributes of two alternatives. *The key is two.

Unfortunately, when we see examples of CBA decisions in the construction industry, they are sometimes a distorted version of a CBA Tabular Method decision. Additionally, they often don’t follow the four principles and the specific language that CBA uses.

There are two main issues with this. There is significant variation in what people understand and portray versus what CBA is. More importantly, utilizing any CBA method incorrectly can lead to an unsound decision, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid with CBA to begin with.

Obviously, this is not the intention people have when they are trying to make a decision with CBA. However, good intentions are not enough to drive the right results. The Pivotal Principle of CBA is “Decision makers must learn and skillfully use sound methods.”

Learning CBA, so that it can be skillfully used, is a little different than what we are used to doing with learning. It’s not hard, it’s just different.

Methods Lead to Outcomes

There is a cause-and-effect model with CBA. The model shows that our outcomes are largely caused by the actions we take. Our actions, of course, are largely caused by the decisions we make. We make the decisions we do based on the methods we use.

If we want to improve our outcomes, we need to change our actions. To do that effectively, we’ll want to change the decisions we make, and to do that, we’ll want to improve our methods.

The challenge here is that we often don’t follow formal decision-making methods in the first place. Far too often in the workplace we see decisions being made based on:

• History, legacy, or precedence,
• Conversations or roles – the squeaky wheel, the top-ranking person, or straw votes, or
• Siloed thinking with no other input.

At the end of the day, many workplace decisions end up being based on a gut reaction, instinct, intuition, and with minimal data. The decisions that get made methodically typically follow unsound decision-making methods like weighting rating and calculating; pros and cons; and advantages versus disadvantages. While those may work in some cases, they also can fail due to math errors or, more likely, negativity bias.

A sound decision will:

• Be based on facts and data rather than generalizations;
• Include both subjective and objective data;
• Include criteria that is based on the end users needs and wants;
• Have alignment on criteria with all stakeholders;
• Have stakeholder contribution and buy-in; and
• Will be the best decision at the time with the information available.

With these guidelines in mind, the team will begin the decision-making process. The team goes through the below steps and selects an alternative:

1. Summarize the attributes of each alternative.
2. List the advantages of each alternative.
3. Decide the importance of each advantage.
4. Choose the alternative with the greatest TOTAL IMPORTANCE of advantages.

That seems cut and dry, right? It is not cut and dry at all when you are doing this with a group. CBA is both subjective and objective. It’s not a magic process that collects information and spits out an answer. This takes real skill in team listening, collaboration and negotiation.

More Than Just the Decision Making

Guess what, we’ve just scratched the surface of CBA. Most Choosing By Advantages blog posts, presentations and classes I’ve experienced largely cover the part of CBA of making the decision itself (this one included).

If I were to speculate, that’s probably because that is the part of CBA that is most unfamiliar to people. However, CBA contains five phases for moderately complex decisions. Unfortunately, all too often, the other phases get altered or even missed altogether, which can make a big mess out of a group or team decision.

• Phase I: The Stage-Setting Phase – define the problem and root cause, determine the participants needed, provide basic training, outline the criteria for the decision.
• Phase II: The Innovation Phase – brainstorm alternatives, determine attributes and comparisons.
• Phase III: The Decision-making Phase (Mentally Choosing) – listen, collaborate, and negotiate to select an alternative.
• Phase IV: The Reconsideration Phase (Emotionally Choosing) – do a gut check, pause and sit with the answer for a day, and reconfirm decision with team or identify if change is needed.
• Phase V: The Implementation Phase (Physically Choosing) – ensure expected outcome is clear, adjust as needed, and evaluate the process and results.

These phases probably feel familiar to you. As you were reading through them, you might be thinking “yes, these things should always be done when making complex group decisions!” But now think about decisions you’ve been part of in the past. Think about the times you’ve experienced these phases and times some of them may have been skipped. While many of the specifics from the phases may feel intuitive, I’ve found it helpful to intentionally follow all the phases for CBA.

 

If you’d like to read more on CBA, I invite you to get a copy of the book on Amazon.