Do we need decisions?

This is a provocative article – and maybe I don’t mean it as strongly as I will make it sound. I’m writing this article more to prompt thinking and to open ourselves to the possibility that things could be completely different.

Let’s start with a useful distinction that we make in the world of sociocracy. In sociocracy, there are two different kinds of decisions: operational decisions and policy decisions. (Related systems like Holacracy have somewhat similar ways of talking about that.)

How the difference between policy and operational decisions is described is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. The overly simplistic way of describing it is “operational decisions are the decisions for the day-to-day, and policy decisions are higher level that a board would take.” Now this is not fully wrong but also not right.

The problem with this way of thinking of high-level vs. low-level decisions is that it plays into elitist thinking. Often, people assume that those “higher up” are making policy decisions while those “lower down” make the day-to-day decisions because the higher-ups are good at deciding and the workers are good at doing. It’s a distinction between doing and deciding that I think is deeply flawed and, because of its assumption of the primacy of language and decisions, very problematic.

Sociocracy has a more lateral definition. I define it like this:

• an operational decision is a decision on one instance
• a policy decision is a rule that applies to all similar contexts.

The interesting thing about this definition is that it’s agnostic to hierarchy and therefore less elitist: policy decisions can be made on any level of the organization, as long as it’s a bulk decision.

Even the most grassroots decision can be made as a policy decision, it has nothing to do with high or low level. Let’s use an easy example to get the difference clear between the level of scope and the difference between a one-time and a rule-based decision: let’s say we have a young organization where people send emails in their roles. They might want to give their emails a bit more formality and glamour so they decide to add a signature with the organization’s logo and maybe their role and phone number. Now Ted makes his signature, and my colleague makes theirs. The two signatures will likely look slightly different because we each individually decided and made it. Those are operational decisions.

Policy decisions, on the other hand, are rules. That’s when someone (circle or boss, doesn’t matter) decides that from now on, all signatures have to look like xyz. Now we have a rule. The same logic applies to all matters, big or small, high-level or deep in the operational weeds. Now we have a hierarchy-free definition of policy vs. operations since the kind of decision is independent of how we decide who makes what policy decision; we can assign decision-making domains in a decentralized manner, or resort to leadership.

Now that we understand the two different kinds of decisions, let’s look at them in more detail.

What really is a decision

It’s striking how rarely we even think about what a decision is, given that we talk so much about them. The word comes from Latin ‘cutting off’ – we choose one option and ‘cut off’ the others.

For example, in a policy decision, we choose one rule over other alternative rules – the other set of options are now cut off. For example, if we choose to go with supplier ABC from now on, we make a bulk decision that all future orders will be with ABC and not with others. The other possible scenarios are disregarded.

In an operational decision, it’s a little different. Those are typically made in the moment, alongside the work often in an implicit way. As we make our own email signature, we ‘cut off’ other ways of acting, like making a different signature or making no email signature. We actively shape reality.

So far so good. I’ve already given these definitions a little bent toward what I will argue for later but this should work.

So why would I question whether decisions are a thing, given that I can explain it so nicely?

How we really decide

You might have heard about the experiment where they found out that our brain makes a decision even before we can have a conscious thought. (It has been discussed in the context of the question of whether we have free will.) Interestingly, as people like Iain McGilchrist are showing, people may make choices and then have great stories to tell about why they chose that. The problem is, they can be tricked into confabulation about choices they don’t understand, revealing that a lot of that is spinning a narrative after the fact.

So we think decision-making goes like this: we have thoughts in our brain, and when we face a decision, we weigh our choices by thinking about them, come to a rational conclusion and then tell the hand what button to press. Cute story, except that it’s not true.

My provocation is that decision-making in the collective domain is very similar. Could it be true that teams choose what makes sense and then internally justify for themselves after the fact? Just because something feels like a decision, doesn’t mean that it is one.

My sense is – and that’s a very unpopular opinion – that values and even purposes are used like that. Quite often, we do what we want to do and then we internally justify them by telling ourselves that this is the choice most aligned with our values or purposes. Why do I think that? I mean, how often does it actually happen that we think about what action would be the best expression of a value we have listed on our website, without a preconceived notion of what we think is the common sense choice? There’s a lot of confabulation in the field, pretty words to tell a story. Sure, values shape choices, but maybe in a more indirect manner than we think.

Don’t get me wrong, I like that people make common sense decisions that are more intuitive than they admit. I think it’s the only sane thing to do. We can’t consider the best outcomes explicitly and all of our options and all potential implications for all our values each time we make a choice. We simply don’t have the bandwidth to do it. There are too many options. (Vervaeke calls this ‘combinatorial explosion’.) And in fact, if we really knew the absolute rationally best answer, it wouldn’t be a decision. A decision is only a decision if there was a level of uncertainty in the first place. If one choice is obviously better than another, it would be, well, obvious. That’s not a decision worth spending time on.

Another fundamental issue I have with this way of thinking is that it acts as if decision-making was linear: ‘here’s the rule and now apply it’. But that isn’t true. There are many more things to consider than we can even count. Our linear way of thinking about decisions throws us into deep trouble when a decision is more evidently complex and contradictory. For example, if our purpose and values or aims say to do xzy but we don’t have the budget for it. Or if a choice would be good for the organization but bad for the people, like a strategy to improve our response time but also to let people go home early for family reasons. The simple, linear narrative that we make policies and then people make day-by-day decisions that carry them out directly is so reductionist that it’s just wrong. It’s maybe how our boss wants us to act in theory (if they want a bunch of people working to rule) but we don’t actually behave that way.

It also points to why implementations of decisions fail. Way too often, people think that a decision is made and therefore, reality will change. But just because people in a board room raised their hand to vote after staring at a piece of paper with ink blots commonly called a proposal doesn’t mean that people out there in the world will change their behavior… unless there they face dire consequences if they don’t. And that’s the other reason I struggle with what I call the supremacy of words where we think decisions lead to outcomes. I can only command something and expect for you to do it when I have power over you. Without that, my words are just noise that goes ignored. So our assumptions about how decision-making works are inherently assuming power-over relationships. In a choice-based way of acting, I’d need to either trust your decision – which requires ra elationship – or I’d have to understand the decision – which requires context.

Now, sure, in consent/circle-based decision-making like sociocracy, we hand decision-making domains to circles by consent, meaning we willingly choose to give them power. And I don’t think that’s inherently wrong. But it’s funny how much people think that saying something makes it so, and how much that carries a power-over assumption. Just hold that thought for later.

So let me summarize where we are: The simple narrative is that we make policy decisions and, in a linear manner, make choices based on that. That’s often not true since there are many (even conflicting) considerations that play into choices. People need to weigh the trade-offs and often decide intuitively or based on “common sense.” And implementation of decisions outside of brute force only works within a relationship and/or a shared context.

How it could work instead

I’d argue that if rational, linear decision-making doesn’t work, people replace what they do with common sense. Let’s use a simple example: where I live, we drive on the right side of the road. If you ask people, why they do that, they might say “because it’s the law.” But be honest, have you ever looked up that law? I think it’s more honest to say that we drive on the right side of the road because everyone else does. And we’ve been told by our friends and family. Our parents used to drive on the right side. Our cars are set up for that. We do it, because all our context cues suggest it. If they changed the law tomorrow, it would be chaos. So it’s not the decision that changes our behavior. It’s a lot of things together. I will call that the context.

This is of course true in organizations as well. I am currently making the choice of writing this article, which means there are about a million other things I’m not doing. I have 53 unanswered emails in my inbox and 10 Slack messages. One of my kids needs a doctor’s appointment, and my therapist emailed me choices for appointments which I should book asap. That’s just the obvious things, not even considering going for a walk for exercise, calling my sister to check in.

You get the idea. You live the same life. We all make choices within competing priorities all the time.

Now in organizational life, (unrealistically) only considering work priorities, there are still many choices. So what do I do when I sit down at my desk? I intuitively choose based on the context. My work context includes everything, including last week’s feedback on my slow response rate, a client who sent a third reminder, my anxiety level about not even seeing messages I might be missing, and the desire to be prepared for my training in an hour. I did not re-read my organization’s strategy although I hold a vague memory of it. So it’s present for me, aside from the piece of paper. It’s present as a memory, a shared experience, an intention.

When I choose what to focus on, hardly any of these choices are conscious. To be very honest, I sat down to write this article just because it “felt right”, not because I considered all the options and implications. And I would bet that the same is true for you. Did you make a rational decision to read my article? I didn’t think so. You were curious, intrigued, it reminded you of something you cared about. You started reading because it felt right. And by “feels right”, I don’t mean you chose the more pleasant option – I simply mean that if you had to explain why you chose this over that, you’d either shrug and say “because it made sense” or you’d give me a long recount of the reasons you considered in a split second – which means you’d tell me the context of your decision.

Again, the context is everything. Your priorities, energy level, how your body feels, the organizational strategy, your relationship with the client that sent the 3rd reminder, your budgetary constraints… everything. It’s the full embodied, participatory knowing of our moment. No one else can know all the things we knew when we chose, and we could never even begin to explain it all. You’d never go into the same river again. Context changes with every moment, and we use what Vervaeke calls Relevance Realization to interpret it by choosing what to elevate in our awareness.

Operational decisions as choiceless choice

And in some moments, we even experience things are choiceless choice. The client sent the third reminder, I just had to respond. That’s choiceless choice. Choiceless choice can feel good – it’s just what needs to happen because it makes sense. (It can also feel like a hamster wheel but that’s a different story; that’s when we don’t use our power to change our circumstances and instead tell ourselves the story that it’s our only choice.)

Imagine you find yourself in front of an approaching train. You swiftly jump off the tracks, shake of the terror, and someone comments “wow, good decision.” Honestly, I’d be bewildered. Jumping our of the way less of a decision and more something we “just did.” Choiceless choice.

Choiceless choice in an organization is what happens when the context is to clear and coherent, it’s just obvious what needs to be done. In an organization with a coherent and thick context, choiceless choice is more likely. People experience that clarity as liberating, satisfying and meaningful. After all, if it’s clear what needs to be done and we get direct feedback that it is effective and desired, that feels really good. In fact, that’s close to the experience of flow.

If the context is not clear, we get confused. Then we spin our wheels, procrastinate, choose randomly and feel dissatisfied with it. The context isn’t giving us clarity.

Now what does that mean for decision-making? Those operational decisions are optimally guided by the context. Everything is clear and we can choose accordingly. We’re certainly picking a choice, but if the choice is obvious, how much choosing is there really to do? Could we create the conditions so we hardly have to consciously decide? We just do things?

So there are good reasons to question whether operational decisions are maybe distracting from the fact that it’s the context that matters. We falsely focus on the imaginary decider when there is just a doer, guided by intuition. Maybe decision-making is not the point. Instead, we’re making choiceless choices in a context. So it’s the context that matters much more, while we tell ourselves that “we made decisions.”

Operational decisions” are therefore more like actions guided by context. For example, you might start doing a task, run into an issue, change something, and on it goes, constantly doing, trying, changing. They are so embedded in the concrete doing that they are inseparable from the specific moment. They are as high context as it gets.

Am I ready to give up the term decision for operational decisions? Not quite. They are decisions. But they are very different from what we imagine as decisions. In reality, they are contextual, sensual, doings, complex, intuitive, often paradoxical. Once we’ve fallen off the belief that it’s decision -> action, all of our doings become choices, every moment of our lives. So, sure, if operational decisions are decisions, then everything else we do is too. Every breath, every step. They’re all embodied choices, guesses in a context. Do we need a separate word for that?

Policy decisions as context shapers

Policy decisions are fascinating. I’ve already mentioned that they carry a bias of words-make-it-so which is amusing on its own and terrifying in the context of power-over. Words have power, sure, but only because we let them.

But let’s look more deeply and what exactly is “cut off” in a policy decision. Policy decisions are abstractions, meaning they open up a conceptual field of possible situations or worlds and declare some of them true or more/less desirable. For example, a policy might declare that there be 2 kinds of membership in our organization, A and B. The words just made it so. All other worlds – possible futures of our organization where we had one or three membership categories – are cut off. (See more about possible world semantics and policy/operations here.)

Other policies outlaw certain behaviors, like “all employees must wash hands” say that possible worlds where we don’t wash our hands shouldn’t exist. Of course, the policy can’t do a thing about me washing my hands in the real world. It’s just an abstraction that talks about worlds. We cut off possibilities in the mental space, in our mental representation of the world. It’s like our policies draft a virtual reality that then makes the organization’s true and desirable world, hoping that having that makes it more likely for people to act accordingly in the real world.

Therefore, policy decisions are inherently detached from the actual situation. That tracks with the fact that policy decisions are typically made in meetings or at least announced in writing. We’re not working, we’re talking about work. So they are very different from operational decisions. Operational decisions are doings. Policy decisions operate in an abstract model.

Policies are helpful because they create shared reality: if I’m the one making the website, I don’t have to wonder how many sections to design on the membership webpage, because I know there should be two, one for each membership category. This example shows really well how policies shape the context. The policy changed the context such that my operational decision about the webdesign just became a choiceless choice because the number of sections is now obvious. A separate policy about branding also makes the color choices obvious. Ideally, all relevant considerations in designing the membership page are obvious because policy decisions have already reduced the possible choices enough. If enough context is set and the policies align with our other perceptions and there is coherence (like with how people behave, how things are set up, and how it feels), then it’s more likely that we’re aligned and that we experience flow.

If we don’t have coherence, then you have people who are anxious, confused, don’t know how to do things, why to do things, people running in different directions, and so on.

Now you could say, Ted, you just proved yourself wrong. You’re saying policy decisions are decisions albeit operating in virtual space, but you say they’re useful. So why question or eliminate them? And I agree. But let’s put a finer point on it.

Policies aren’t absolute

It’s important to see that in this way of looking at it, policies don’t make you do things. Instead, they create a context in which you are more likely to choose a certain behavior. If we have a policy that says to wear the company sweater, but then I spill hot grease over my sweater and take it off so I don’t burn myself more, I have violated policy – but that was because the context changed that changed what choice became obvious. Taking off the sweater just made so much more sense than sticking to policy.

This shows that in practice, policies aren’t absolute; they are more strong recommendations for our consideration to inform my actions. They are factors within the context that I use to evaluate whether or not to do something. That means they are part of the context, not setting the context.

Of course, some organizations are more strict than others. For example, it might be that I get fired for taking my sweater off and no one even cares to ask why I did. There are a million examples of “you broke the rules, we don’t care why”-behavior. I think that is because some people really struggle to operate in a paradigm where rules aren’t absolute. Because we talk about them like they are, and we’re not honest about the fact that every rule remains a situational judgement call.

So are policies decisions? I guess so. They “cut off” possible worlds from our consideration (we won’t consider worlds for the moment where we have 3 membership categories) for the moment. But as do a lot of other things. Policies are not the only context shapers. So many other constraints might be at odds with our policies – like our values, factual capacity, strategies, visions, budgetary constraints, physical constraints, energy level, contentment, external factors, ideas, relationships, and all of our actions (operational decisions). All of those together shape our context.

So, I have a hard time seeing virtual modelling exercises that we engage in as the deciding context-setters. That’s maybe what our reductionist left-brain logic wants us to think. But it’s simply not as true as we pretend it is.

That doesn’t mean they don’t matter. They are an illusion, but a helpful illusion – because if we shape the context in a coordinated way, then people can collaborate more easily. They use the same workflows, assumptions, logos etc. But we have to be honest about their limitations and pay attention to the context as a whole. Policy decisions are decisions on their own but not the only factors in contributing to what happens next when people make choices in their operational choices and doings.

Now what

I want to advocate for organizations where policies alongside other context-shapers are used to consciously shape the context to ease choiceless choice towards desired outcomes. This way of seeing things is not only hierarchy-free (because context could be set anywhere), it’s also not relying on power-over because instead of forcing people to do things, we co-create a context where making good choices is the most logical choice. It’s more truthful, realistic and holistic. But it means to let go of a deep-rooted belief that we make decisions and then things happen.

In practice, this changes the view of operational and policy decisions at the same time.

Improving “operational decisions”

Operational decisions are improved by supporting people in considering relevant context. My assumption is that operational decision are made by individuals in an embedded manner, where doing and choosing actions become inseparable.

That means a million different things, among them:

• giving people better access to transparent information instead of giving them rules
• creating feedback rich environments where people get immediate feedback on choices made
• context-shaping (policy-making) power with those with more context and insight – as is done in systems like sociocracy where workers make policy decisions in their domain
• but most importantly, tracking whether people have enough context for making a choice; meaning: do we have enough policies to set our context in a helpful way? Have we talked enough about budgetary constraints, what we care about, what is needed, what our visions are, what feedback we’ve received, what our overall shared strategic assumptions are, etc… so people have enough context to make choices? Is the context aligned enough to we make aligned choices?

Improving operational decisions then has to do more with choice architecture, which brings us to policy decisions.

Improving “policy decisions”

Policy decisions as context shapers is a helpful reframe. Context shaping is only necessary where things aren’t already headed in a desirable direction anyway, more like proactive course correction than rules.

Policy decisions need to come from the context and fit into the context, otherwise people will circumvent them in their daily choices. They need to be made by people who are in that context and have the participatory and perspectival knowledge of that space.

It makes a lot of sense to keep the sociocratic practice to make policy decisions by group consent. This consent is then more like an alignment check: do you see any reason in which changing our shared context in this way (as spelled out by the policy) would create misalignment with other standing agreements or practices, like our aim, other policies or other organizational constraints?

If policies change context and are set within a context, the context becomes self-organizing and ever-changing. That means, it’s obvious that policies need to be reviewed either at the end of their turn or whenever significant shifts in the context around a policy have occurred. (This is broad implications, for example for the perennial question of whether it’s allowed to withdraw consent to a decision made if circumstances change.)

Organizational governance can also learn from nudging, inspiring teams to change reality to make certain outcomes likely instead of ruling by stating words on pieces of paper. In practice, this means to focus less on rules than on implementation and creating the conditions within our realm of influence. My idea here is to see what we do instead of talking about what others should do.

People need to see policies within their wider context and discern when a policy is the best course of action, and when other forms of context setting – like shared feedback, exchange on desirable and undesirable outcomes etc. As an example, it can be much more effective to spell out the negative implications of a piece of work being late (“when people don’t fill out the timesheet by Friday 4pm, I have to stay longer or get up early on weekends to do payroll”) instead of making a policy that timesheets have to be filled out be 4pm.

With this way of thinking about things, participatory processes become a no-brainer because we can only tap into our context if we get a broad sense of what is going on; participatory processes are and essential (but not the only) part of creating and shaping the shared context. And the context becomes shared if we step out of an individualistic frame and hold things more collectively – for example, acknowledging a given constraint in a group publicly leads to more change than doing it in a number of 1:1 conversations.

That shared context and mutual understand of each other’s context is the soil where everything else grows. In other words, this collective context shaping and reshaping is a way to put into practice the proverbial “moving at the speed of trust”, the collective level of what John Vervaeke calls “Relevance Realization” on an individual level.

You can maybe see a shift in focus here: instead of focusing on the heroic act of decision-making, focusing on the context from which these decisions come and how they change the context and are changed by the context. We need to see the shared organizational context, or “public discourse” as an asset, like ‘coherence capital’ that needs to be nurtured ongoingly, not only when a choice needs to be made. While our culture focuses on the visible performance of power like a leader making a bold choice, maybe we neglect the less salient million little choices that led up to that moment – or might even have informed a better choice.

One caveat

I need to add one caveat: there’s a big difference between policy decisions that are context shapers for behavior and those decisions that change our governance rules (like changing decision-making domain or roles). Since those are entirely mental constructs in the first place, decisions can be made rather easily using speech acts. If I legitimately hold power and I say “I hereby give you the authority to decide xyz” then the authority landscape of who decides what has shifted. That’s different from policy decisions about our work and has a different set of constraints (legitimacy being one of them). Maybe those are actually the only true decisions we can make in organizations because of the virtual reality of them. I’m actively working on that. But since structured governance/domain decisions are very unusual still outside of sociocracy and Holacracy, this is secondary for this article.

Overall, this piece of work is a part of a decade-long journey to ease decision-making in organizations that considers individual, organization-level and planetary needs.

How could an organization look without absolute decisions? I have absolutely no idea. Let’s think about it.