Article

Decision Making in the Time of Complexity

Posted October 26, 2022 | Leadership | Amplify
Decision complexity
Dave Martin, Tony Ponton, and Kim Ballestrin explain that humans crave certainty, and we desperately want to be right the first time. They argue that trying to be “right” can lead us astray in highly complex environments. Thus, we must become comfortable with ambiguity, especially with the notion of arriving at a partially correct decision. Next, we need to select the appropriate measures to track our progress. Are we on the right track or not? Once we have additional information, we can adapt our decision and refine our course of action. This iterative process serves us well in complex situations for which our predictive powers are simply far too limited.
About The Author
Dave Martin
David Martin is an enterprise and leadership coach and Executive Principal at Elabor8 with expertise in helping organizations big and small deliver outcomes that matter most. He has decades of experience as an Agile practitioner, people manager, leader, and coach across many industries, including healthcare, industrial control, financial services, and telco. In addition to his day job, Mr. Martin coaches and mentors other coaches, Agile… Read More
Tony Ponton
Tony Ponton is recognized as a contributor and leader in the Australian and global Agile communities. He has more than 20 years’ experience across multiple organizational change programs, transformations, Agile implementations, and leadership change initiatives. Mr. Ponton is co-creator/coauthor and VP of the Remote Agility Framework (remote:af). In between helping organizations change the world of work, he cochairs the podcast The Agile… Read More
Kim Ballestrin
Kim Ballestrin is Global Group Manager at Elabor8. She has more than 20 years’ diverse management experience in IT, assisting some of Australia’s most prominent organizations on their Agile change journey. Ms. Ballestrin is a skilled technologist, having worked in roles from IT business analysis to program and delivery center management. She specialises in Lean, Cynefin, Agile, systems thinking, design thinking, DevOps, and ideas to improve the… Read More
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