March 9, 2009: Decision making in uncertain times. Managing encounters with uncertainty and discontinuity.

march 9, 2009: Decision making in uncertain times. Managing encounters with uncertainty and discontinuity.
Presenter – Dr Elyssebeth Leigh

Once upon a time – so the story goes – to be a successful decision maker only required memorising then following carefully a chosen set of stepping stones called a “ decision-making sequence.”
You know the kind of thing. First do this, then do that and follow that with the other. And behold! A decision emerges as you cut your way through all the competing options to find your way to clarity and certainty!
Whether you actually thought they were as helpful as their proposers asserted, might have been a different matter. For my self I always felt there was something missing – but could not say what it was – so said naught.
Now I know why I felt something was missing. I have learned that decisions -
 happen in contexts – which heavily influence your starting point
 are of different kinds – which kind is yours?
 have known and unknown influencing factors – which impact on the extent to which you can make/implement a decision anyway
 are driven by causes which may have different effects in different conditions
 concern problems that will not always succumb to applications of logical sequencing
The work of David Snowden and the Cognitive Edge team has opened my eyes to a whole new world of ‘decision making in uncertain times’. This session will introduce the Cognitive Edge approach to thinking, learning and decision making in the 21st century. The action will focus on Snowden’s model of ‘decision heuristics’ to co-create some new understandings of problem finding and decision creating.