‘How to decide’ with Jon Bircher

What does it really mean to be a great decision-maker, and why is this skill so often left to chance?

In this episode of The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender sit down in person with Jon Bircher, decision coach and former strategy consultant, to explore why decision-making is rarely taught, and how we can do it better. Jon shares insights from his coaching work with senior leaders who often feel confident in solo decisions, but struggle in collaborative settings. We talk about why so many decisions get stuck in ambiguity, how emotion and gut feeling play a role, and how leaders can build conditions for more thoughtful, inclusive, and reflective decision-making.

This is a conversation about slowing down to ask better questions, experimenting with new ways of thinking, and developing a decision-making practice that’s fit for the complexity of leadership today.

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 3:34 Why did you become a decision coach?
• 4:58 What was the number one motivator that made people come to you?
• 7:01 Why do organisations not teach leaders how to make decisions?
• 8:15 What’s your framework for thinking about how decisions work in the real world?
• 9:43 What’s your definition of a decision?
• 11:27 Have you experienced people who are chasing the certainty, others who bulldoze the decision and lastly those who are concerned with the optics of the decision, how it’s going to land politically etc?
• 13:48 What recurring problems do you see when you’re coaching people in terms of being better at making decisions?
• 15:36 What are you learning when it comes to leaders who say they are great decision makers except when they are with other people?
• 17:48 Have you looked at the conditions that need to exist in those rooms to be able to solicit and listen to those diverse perspectives and experiences?
• 22:27 Can we talk about learning from decisions?
• 25:41 I love what Annie Dukes says in ‘Thinking In Bets’ about how we often confuse the result with the decision.
• 26:47 When we’re young we’re taught to defend bad decisions. What’s the mindset shift that has to happen where we break through that natural emotional resistance to be honest with our poor decisions?
• 29:06 What’s your favourite process, what’s most helpful?
• 31:59 Can that process still be followed when decisions have to be made at pace?
• 33:43 You said earlier that we’re making thousands of decisions each day and most of those are unconscious. How do we get better at being more conscious when we’re reacting to rather than deciding if things are really important?
• 36:14 How do you reduce the emotions around that, because when we’ve got different views and it’s not explicit that’s going to generate a lot of heat in the conversation?
• 38:48 So the emotions that you were both experiencing in that, did it reveal different frames about what you believe the coaching business should look like, how it should function etc?
• 41:37 One of the themes that we’ve covered on the podcast is leaders not being sure where they are on that spectrum between certainty, risk and uncertainty and making decisions across that spectrum differently. What advice can you give us?
• 45:08 How do you allow people to embrace their ignorance in a way that makes them feel ok about it?
• 47:26 Can we talk about AI for a moment – how is Chat GPT and other agents changing how you think about decision making?
• 50:44 What are your thoughts on the potential for AI to make us worse decision makers if we don’t use it well?
• 53:08 This makes me think about the moral component of decision making.
• 55:31 How do you think decision making is changing based on the conversations that you’re having with leaders and the way that you see decisions playing out? Do you see any changes?
• 57:11 Is there a final thought that you’d like to leave our listeners?

Transcript

Scott Allender: 0:09

Hey folks, welcome to another special edition of the evolving leader, where Jean and I had the privilege of being together in person in his studio outside of London and talking to a guest in person. Can't wait to play this episode for you in just a moment. But before we do, Jean, how are you feeling today, my friend,

Jean Gomes: 0:27

I'm feeling excellent. I'm feeling really good. I'm feeling pumped with energy, and I'm also feeling a lot of gratitude for you making it over to the UK to do the this, this conversation in person, because it makes such a difference. It's, it's, it's phenomenal. And I'm also feeling very grateful to the guest that made this show special, John Bircher. He's a decision coach, and I think you know what he highlighted, there is something that's probably in the wind for everybody, which is nobody ever teaches us how to make decisions. We're kind of expected to learn it from the imbibe it through osmosis by watching other people doing it. And so when you ask people, you know, how do you make decisions, they don't really know. And then the other kind of problems that John was talking about in terms of, well, a lot of people think they're good decision makers, but then you say, are you good making decisions with other people? And not so much. And do we learn from our decisions? You know, these are kind of like simple, simple questions that the answer is no, not really no. And given the fact that leaders number one job is actually to make decisions, that's quite interesting observation. So I'm really excited to get into the show. How are you feeling? Scott,

Scott Allender: 1:43

everything you just said 100% I don't think we talk about it enough, right? I think the assumption that we are good decision makers. But to your point and to John's point, can we do it collaboratively, and are we reflective on our decisions? Certainly, we all make decisions that we regret, but do we maximise the opportunity to learn from those mistakes and also then to inform how we make better decisions in the future. So I think it's a conversation we need to be consistently having as leaders in a more uncertain world. So let's tune in to this important conversation.

Jean Gomes: 2:18

Scott, it's so good that we're together finally, after four and a half years of doing this show completely virtually. How you feeling?

Scott Allender: 2:26

I'm feeling so grateful to be with you. We've been talking about doing in person shows for four and a half years. Yeah, and today's the first day, it's good to be near you. Yeah, you too many. Zoom delay, and I want to talk to you. I actually hear what you're saying in real time. That's

Jean Gomes: 2:42

great. Well, we'll be able not to interrupt each other now, so that'd be, that'd be good. We get some visual cues.

Scott Allender: 2:48

Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited. Thanks for, thanks for having me here with

Jean Gomes: 2:52

you. Excellent. Well, I'm feeling really excited about today because we I've got a guest who I've been talking to for, you know, best part of the year around his work. And I'm, you know, I'm fascinated by it, because it's like the lifeblood of leadership and how organisations function. So, John, welcome to the evolving leader. It's great to have you here. Thank you for having me. How are you feeling?

Jon Bircher: 3:19

I think I'm feeling the love. I mean, it's really, I'm excited, because you guys are excited to see each other, which is really cool. No, I'm genuinely, I'm in a really good place. Actually, this year has been a exciting year. I'm buzzing, little bit nervous about where we go today, though. Now I'm in a good

Jean Gomes: 3:33

place. So you had a really successful career and and it had, you know, some different phases to it. So why did you get in? Can you tell us a little bit about why you you you move from that into becoming a decision coach.

Jon Bircher: 3:48

I'd like to say it was very clearly planned out decision, but it wasn't quite like that. And I guess the easy answer would be, decisions matter, and our life's made up of the decisions we make. That's the kind of quick answer. I think it was a combination of things. Like, I'd come out of a career in leadership and in particular, strategy consulting, and spent my life really helping in the world. I was in pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Think about the choices they were making with the assets they were bringing through, and the brands they were launching. And I started coaching, and realised that many of the reasons people came to a coaching conversation was because they had tricky decisions to make. And I guess that passion for coaching and then recognising that a lot of what I had been doing was helping people with decisions, albeit at a more strategic level, rather than a life level, started to intrigue me. And then, yeah, started to dig around a little bit and say, I think there's a there's an unmet need here that kind of matches my passion. And I I'm not quite convinced that people are being well equipped to be better decision makers. Was

Scott Allender: 4:58

there a theme in what people. People would ask about when they came to you, saying, Listen, I'm faced with tough decisions. Did you? Did you explore, like, patterns of fear around making the wrong choice? Or, you know, what was the what was the number one, like, motivator for people coming to you? I'm not

Jon Bircher: 5:14

convinced people, and maybe this is a topic for a conversation, but I'm not convinced people always knew they were making a decision. There was a decision in front of them. And I think what I was starting to notice, maybe it's just like, I think as coaches, we attract certain types of people our experiences, or where we show up. And I was finding, I was meeting quite a lot of people who were at point in their life where they were questioning, Okay, what's next? You know, you hear that kind of adage of, I've kind of gone to that mountain I think I've got another mountain in me. Don't really know what it is. And that was my experience, by the way, I come out of this kind of 25 years in the pharma, biotech world, most of that leading a strategy consulting firm, and then, and then at this moment, where it's like, do I want to carry on doing this, or do I move towards something else? And so I think there's this, there's an attraction of people that were coming and were asking questions about what next in my life, you know, there, I'm not quite sure what it is, but I don't think I want to carry on doing what I'm doing. And so those are big questions, and actually, in some ways, more important than a product being launched, right? It's about where do I want to go next? Who do I want to be? Type question, questions. So that's probably where it started. And then I just started asking questions people about decision making as a skill. Did they feel it was a skill they'd they'd spent time on or learned or been educated in? And I kept finding almost the same answer, which is, it's really critical. The more senior you get, the harder the decisions are, the more complex the decisions are, the more risky the decisions are. And then the other answer was that I'm I've never been trained on it, and 99.9% of the time, that's quite anecdotal, but people were saying I've never had any training on decision making at all in my whole career. And these are senior

Jean Gomes: 7:01

leaders. That's fascinating, isn't it? I mean, it may be a truism that decision making is the, you know, the key to making a business work. I mean, that's, that's what we're paid to do as leaders. So why is it left to chance? Do you think, why do organisations not teach leaders how to make decisions?

Jon Bircher: 7:21

I feel a little bit like, if you you know, whether you look at Harvard Business Review, or you look like a Korn Ferry report, or, you know, when you look at these various different Forbes, or whatever it might be, who explore, what are the skills you need to be a great leader, you don't that often see decision making or decisiveness pulled out. You do sometimes, but not that often. And I wonder whether this is part of the challenge. It kind of gets wrapped up in other things. You know, I think you had a guest on who talked about being a great strategic thinker, or you have, you know, you have skills around critical thinking or leadership. More generally, there's part of me that thinks it gets wrapped up in those other things, and therefore doesn't find its way as a specific skill that gets pulled out and developed and nurtured and and therefore, what really happens is people have to learn on the job, and they just do it by experience. I

Scott Allender: 8:14

was going to point that out too. I was wondering, you know, do we conflate it into the experience module, right, or the experience sort of like you have this experience. So I assume you must be really good at making decisions in this field, right? But, you know, we'd like to think of decisions as purely rational, and probably like to think of ourselves as rational decision makers. But decisions are quite messy, right? The whole process is quite messy. So can you tell us a little bit about your your frame? I don't

Jon Bircher: 8:40

know. It'd be really interesting if you could kind of get a live feed from the audience listening, because my sense is, especially when you start to look at profiling individuals and how they feel about decisions, is, I it's not this simple, because it's probably a sort of sliding scale around a range of factors. But I think different people feel differently about decisions. So some people say, Yeah, I think, you know, decision making is rational and objective. And I'm quite rational objective. I wonder whether actually a lot of what we hear is the opposite. Great decision makers. They've just got a bit of magic. They're decisive. They go with their gut. They just got a really good sense of what's the right answer or the wrong answer. You hear it, don't you hear it in recruitment. You hear it in strategy. I just, you know, I've got all the evidence in evidences here, but that's the decision we're going to make, because I believe it's right. And then you think, is that what we're hearing as well? So therefore that sort of lends itself to we can't train it, because it's not rational and objective. It's just this sort of somehow special secret sauce that some leaders have. And hopefully, if we chuck them in and help them to become leaders, they'll suddenly become more

Jean Gomes: 9:43

decisive. So in the sense what you're saying is that we're not really all talking the same language about what a decision is, because some people think it's logic. Some people think it's kind of like that emotional, social kind of mix of things. What's your day? Definition of a decision. I mean, it sounds a bit ridiculous to ask, because it probably seems obvious, but do you do you start there?

Jon Bircher: 10:08

Yeah. And I wonder whether is it decision, or is it decisive? You're decisive because you kind of know the answer, and you've got a good gut feel. So if we kind of say leaders need to be decisive, it says something different than, I think, than if we said leaders need to be great decision makers or better decision makers. That feels more like it could be open to rational and emotional and other things, whereas decisive feels a bit more intuitive. Gut, yeah, I don't know that's mine. Feels like a state, yeah, yeah. So I think there's a maybe, I haven't articulated it this way before, but I think there's a starting point, which is, where are you on that sort of spectrum of how you feel about decision making? And that could be the speed you prefer to make decisions. It could be your attitude to risk it could be how objective you are versus intuitive you are, there's a range of different aspects that we should be thinking about before we start decision making, because I see leaders who would say one of the things that challenges the most is they overthink, and they're a bit of a procrastinator. They're kind of trying to make sure they've got all of the data and information in place in order to move forward with a decision. And you've got the other end of the spectrum. You've got decision makers who are just going with their going with their gut, making really impulsive decision, and the rest of the organisation is going can just slow down.

Scott Allender: 11:27

I was also wondering if you experience people I feel like I've experienced this in the coaching work that I do, where sometimes people are chasing the certainty, they have low tolerance for uncertainty and risk, and they want to get all the information, and they get a stuck in analysis paralysis. And then I talk to people like you're talking about, where they're just sort of almost bulldozing trust my gut, and then there seems to be, like a third group, probably more than a third group, and another group that they're, they're really concerned with the optics of the decision. So they're, they're, they actually don't trust their gut enough. Or they're sort of thinking because they're actually concerned with how it's going to land politically, or sort of how it will be seen. Is it the popular decision to make? I don't want to make a decision that's not going to garner me the right kind of praise, right? So do you? Did you find that a lot in your coaching work,

Jon Bircher: 12:13

it feels like that's quite late to Jean's question as Emma, which is, I mean, this is what I find fascinating about decision making, is it it kind of somehow holds together all these different aspects. You know, there's the logical like it. Does this make sense? Is there good data? Is it evidence? You know, have I engaged everybody in the process? Have I kind of stepped through the right steps that make sense for my organisation? What about my intuition and my gut and my experiences and what maybe my friends or my partner has told me, you know, so there's an emotional element in that for some of us, we might be on a spiritual journey. So there might be a kind of like, you know, spiritual aspect, or a prayerful aspect of thinking about a decision and, you know, and then if I look at what I think is fascinating, even in some of the guests you've had along, you know, along the way, and you think about things like the way we think, and our meta cognition, and we think about our interoception and what our Morleys are saying. And then you think about attitudes to risk, and all of these things play out actually when you think about making a decision, including as a leader. You know, my leadership is made visible, not just in the decisions I make, but the way I go about making decisions and how I take people on the journey. So my values, my character, my moral code, all plays out actually in some of the big decisions I make. And so I think, I think it's fascinating that all of those aspects have to play a role. And yet, how often in organisations or even in our own lives, do we find ourselves in the middle of a decision? We're making a decision before even realising we're in a

Jean Gomes: 13:47

decision? What are the kind of recurring problems you see when you're coaching people in terms of being better at decisions?

Jon Bircher: 13:56

I think it's worth saying that I feel like I'm so at the beginning of my own journey on this, because there's just so much emerging science that come that's coming out that I now can see through this lens of that has an impact on decision making. And so I'm seeing it not just in the people I'm working with, but I'm seeing it in my own life and in my business's life, right? I mean, it's real life, learning, I think first and foremost, probably it's about stepping back and thinking about how we're deciding. So we call it like deciding how to decide. But if I was going to kind of use your type of language, I would probably say it's the meta decision. Yeah, we've got to, we've got to step back and think about this decision that we're making and ask ourselves some really great questions about that. So I think the skill really underneath all of this is, can we ask better questions that stimulate better thinking? Because if we can do some better thinking, that doesn't necessarily mean we take weeks or months over, but if we can do some better thinking, we. Will probably make better decisions that therefore mean we become better leaders, and hopefully those better decisions by better leaders create a better world. And goodness we need a better world at the moment,

Jean Gomes: 15:13

right? Yeah,

Jon Bircher: 15:15

yeah. So I think I don't know if I quite answered your question, but I think it's something rooted in stepping back, thinking about what's in front of us, making visible that there is a decision, and then asking ourselves all the people around us some really great questions that help us decide how to decide.

Jean Gomes: 15:37

In one of our previous conversations, you said something about that really struck home to me, which was a lot of leaders think they're great decision makers, except when they're with other people. So, you know, making decisions together becomes very problematic often. So I'm great, I'm a great individual decision maker, but am I great at making decisions with others? You'd say a little bit about about what you're learning with

Jon Bircher: 16:02

that. Yeah, I I feel like even those individuals who see themselves as quite decisive and good decision makers, and I'm not going to judge whether they are or not, would would say that it gets much more complicated than other people are in the room. Yeah, right, because now I've got a whole series of other inputs to play out. And I think it plays to your point, Scott, about like now we make right decisions and culturally, right decisions for an organisation and move in the right direction. So I think most people would probably say it does get harder. And maybe the reason that this is of of today, of this time, is because we've tried to create organisations that are made up of diverse individuals. We've realised that it doesn't quite make sense to kind of recruit people that look and feel just like us and really want that diversity, which is brilliant, but it's only brilliant if we tap into it and so, and I'm not necessarily talking about religious or cultural or ethnic, ethnic or diversity, I'm probably getting to the heart of like, cognitive diversity. So if we're going to tap into all these different people with all their experiences and challenges and ways of doing the world and biases and perspectives and assumptions, all that stuff, then we then it's going to get harder, even though, ultimately, if we do it, well, the decision is probably going to be better one. And so there, I think, is the is the challenge. How do you when you've got a leadership team, for example, of 12 people in a room with different functions, with different geographies, with different perspectives and experiences, how do you go about from beginning to end, making a decision, implementing that decision and getting better at decision making. And I think that's where it gets tough.

Scott Allender: 17:48

Have you looked at the conditions that need to exist in those rooms for being able to solicit and listen to the diverse perspectives and experiences?

Jon Bircher: 17:56

I heard somebody say the other day, we shouldn't give answers, we should only give responses. I think that's a really nice way out, actually, because I I feel like I'm still on that learning journey. So I'm going to give you a response. Is it the right answer? I don't I don't know. I think one of the things is creating space to think I'm a real fan of the work of Nancy Klein, and the time to think context of creating conditions that ignite someone's independent thinking. And we live in a world where we like to interrupt and give a perspective, or we listen in order to be able to respond to someone else's answer. And so I think there's something about creating conditions that are good for better thinking. I think some of the tools, perhaps, like, you know, old tools like de Bono's thinking hats are very helpful because they allow us to synchronously think as teams. So instead of, when someone's coming up with an idea, someone else is poo pooing, it is actually, let's all come up with ideas together, and then let's pull them apart together, or have a specific team, you know, like red teaming, where they're coming in and challenging something, but not everybody is challenging at different times. I think there's some structuring of the environment and some tools and techniques we can use to better think together. I think one of the downsides that we tend to find in an environment that is quite easily solvable is when we're thinking about decision making in a well, individually or collectively, is there's almost two, two big phases that are going on when we're together in a room, or a series of events of being together in a room. The one is more divergent and one is more convergent. There's the period of time in the decision process where we are widening our options, looking at alternatives. It's like that more ideation phase, but then there comes a point where you can't just keep coming up with more and more options and alternatives. You've got to evaluate those and ultimately select a way forward. And so different schools and different tools and techniques you would use, and different environments you would create, depending on which. Of those parts of the process you're going through, but we tend to convolute them, and often what we'll do is we can't somebody comes with a pre prepared business case on three options, and then the group decide on right and we haven't had any input in the different options. We haven't done any collective thinking about options and alternatives that will be better than the ones that are already being tabled. And yet we now have to make a decision on three that we might not believe in any of.

Scott Allender: 20:26

And yet, often, the person with the most power in the room has a favoured one, and that one tends to, I imagine, often get championed, right? They're not really necessarily three equal options, yeah, in some in some rooms, yeah.

Jon Bircher: 20:40

And the job becomes about persuasion, as opposed to what's the best decision in that particular environment. So I pause because it made me think back to your question earlier, Jean, which is, why are organisations leaving it to chance? I wonder whether part of the reason organisations lead it to chance, to use your words, is because there's, there's, there's, there's a lot of escalation that happens with decision making. So people go away, they do all the work, they come and then it gets escalated the most senior person, a lot of the big decisions happen at the very top. We don't many, I can't think of many organisations really push the critical decisions, the real final decisions, down. So I wonder whether that's part of it, yeah, is actually you don't get the really meaty, high stake decisions until you really, really see it. And even the ones that you do play out in seeing your roles somebody else is still making the ultimate

Scott Allender: 21:31

decision. Yeah, and then you might be making the decision just based on the executive summary somebody put before you, as opposed to necessarily, really having understood the problem that is being faced.

Jon Bircher: 21:42

And so it comes back to we get focused on what is the I don't like this phrase, but what is the right decision? And as opposed to, what is the right approach to this decision making? Actually, wouldn't it be better if we had people engaged through the whole piece a in theory, the decision should be a better decision, but all that change, process, work that might need to happen has already kind of been done. Right? People have been on the journey. And, you know, I'm looking across there, and I see Patrick Lencioni, you know, Patrick Lencioni said, you know, people don't necessarily need to have their their decision or their view chosen. They just need to feel valued and heard in process, and if we valued and heard the right people in the journey, then maybe they're all on board with the decision

Jean Gomes: 22:26

anyway. Yeah, we talk about learning from decisions, because often we're so focused on just progress, we don't look back at those decisions and whether they we made the right decision or even knew what the decision we were making. Can we talk about what your your work in that area? Yeah, I think,

Jon Bircher: 22:47

I think it's really difficult to learn from decisions, and so therefore we avoid it and we don't do it. I think it's difficult individually, and I think it's difficult collectively, and we're still grappling with that actually, like, how do you make this stuff really practical? Because the majority of authors out there, experts out there that are talking about decision making, would agree with a statement Daniel Kahneman said, you know, which is the best thing we can possibly do, is to start journaling about this stuff. To journal about the decisions we make and what we thought would happen, and then look back and see what actually happened and how much of the decision was down to my great deciding and my great implementing, or how much was actually down to chance or luck or all the context. And it's very easy to have an over inflated view of your decision making capability if you're never looking back seeing that actually just got lucky, quite a lot. And the challenge, though, is probably the same as you find it in the coaching senses, regular journaling is difficult, even for some of the most reflective coaches. It's quite a difficult thing to do. And if we believe a lot of the social science that we're making 30, 35,000 decisions every day, obviously, a lot of them are not conscious, but there's a lot of decisions we're making, what are we going to do? Start logging them all. I mean, we wouldn't make any decisions because we any decisions because we've been writing a very long journey. So I think it's getting that balance right. And so what, what we're probably spending more time advising, supporting and practising ourselves, is being a bit more pragmatic with that stuff. So it might be what we do is the big stuff that we start our week. And one of the first things we ask ourselves at the beginning of the week, this is my business partner and I, is, Have we got any big decisions we need to make this week? Is there anything we want to talk about? Is there anything we want to explore in bit more detail? If there's something, then we'll kind of jump through whatever is appropriate in terms of that decision making process. And at the end of the week, as part of our review of the week, we'll say, did we make any decisions, and how do those decisions go and what do we want to do about learning from them or capturing and we'll capture that in a short little journal, and then we'll come back to them maybe three months, six months later, and review. And that's maybe a kind of practice that other people could put in place. So my big decisions, I'm just going to capture some key thoughts about the decision. I. Made the context I was in, how I was feeling at the time, what I predicted the outcome would be, with what level of confidence, and then come back to it and look in, look at what actually happened. And we could do that in business with businesses as well. Couldn't we, like, I think, as a short business log, you know that you're looking back at the decisions you've made as a team that captured, you know, here, here's the decision we made, here's some of the alternatives we discounted, and why this is what we expected to happen. And then you come back, whatever the right time period is, three or six months later, and say, How did it go? You start to become a better decision maker, because you starting to learn what in this process was skill and what in this process was chance.

Jean Gomes: 25:41

Yeah. And I love that observation by Annie Duke. And in the thinking in bets book about that, we often confuse the result with the decision, and we we discount luck and all the other factors that that notion of resulting. Can you, can you talk a little bit about that?

Jon Bircher: 25:58

Yeah. I mean, she essentially says that we look at, you know, we look at the results of the or the outcome of the decision, you know, through the lens of the result, as opposed to whether it was a good or bad decision in the first place. And I guess it's a little bit like framing, if you have a good outcome, and you look in on that with hindsight, then you assume it was a good decision. And that's not always the case. And she runs that thought experiment with a very famous American football game where she looks in on it and says, actually, if we did a little thought experiment here and had a different and saw a different outcome, would you think it was a bad decision? No, we wouldn't. We think it's good decision. And so we have this, we kind of lean towards, when we get a good outcome, we say that was down to our great skill, and when it's not so good an outcome, we blame other things. I

Scott Allender: 26:47

wanted to pick up on that because as I was listening to you talk, I'm thinking, I feel like we're taught to defend bad decisions from the time we're little right, as soon as our parents catch us doing something we shouldn't be doing, we sort of come up with the excuse. Well, you know, he made me do it, or I was tricked into that, or we're always kind of like bad decisions lead to a bad result, and that could, that could hurt me in some way or affect me negatively. So I need to come up with, I need to outsource the reason for my poor choices. So what's like the mindset shift that has to happen where we break through maybe that natural emotional resistance to wanting to get honest with our poor decisions.

Jon Bircher: 27:23

For me, I try to think about I use the language of better rather than right, wrong, poor, good, you know, I just think like, what's our job? Our job is to try to make better decisions than we would if we didn't put the time and energy into it. Because there is a whole piece here, which is we can't control it. So I think it was Obama that said, like, you know, the ultimately, the decisions that you get when you're at the top are horrible ones that nobody wants to make, and there isn't a good answer, you know, and therefore, you've got to get comfortable with probabilities. But, um, you know, it's that idea that we've just got to get more comfortable with that ambiguity. We you know, we've got to be okay with the fact that we can't predict the outcome, but what we can do is is look at all of the intelligence we have around us and make a better decision than we might have done if we just jump straight in and and I think so. Part of it, for me, is about focusing on better but also part of it is what's in our control. And Russ and Schumacher wrote a book called Winning decisions many years ago, and it's still got some really core fundamentals in it. And they essentially say that the one thing we can do is we can focus on having a good decision or process. So and I think lots of other authors have gone on to say, is that good same one thing we can control. We can have a good process, and we can make sure we go through some of those steps, think about the decision we're making, jump through the right steps, and then once we've made the decision, execute it. Well, that's all that's in our control. And sometimes we'll have bad luck, and some time we'll get just rewards. But we can't judge the decision on the outcome. We have to judge the decision on did we go through an appropriate process? What's

Jean Gomes: 29:07

your kind of favourite process? You've you've studied lots of different kind of approaches. What? What are the kind of things that you think are most helpful?

Jon Bircher: 29:17

Maybe, if we come back to this podcast in a few years time, I might have changed my mind, but I I've when you start researching, you realise there's so many different processes, like critical thinking or something. It's just so many out there. It's overwhelming, so many acronyms, so many funky names. And I and we just made a decision we weren't going to do that, that we would just hold together the best thinking of all the people that gone before us and just say, actually, these are some really great steps that we believe you should step through. Sometimes you need to dial this bit up. Sometimes this bit can be dialled back. Sometimes, because of your preferences or organisational style, you need to spend more time here. Sometimes you can move through the through the process quite quickly. And those maybe I'm answering your earlier question there for. Framework of thinking really is, there's some great questions you can ask around certain steps in the process. And those process steps for us would be, let's start by deciding how to decide. Let's take a big step back. Ask ourselves some big questions, like, what is the core of the issue? Is this even the right time to make this decision? Who needs to be in the room, and what intelligence do we need to challenge our biases that kind of questions right up front. Once we do that, we almost act a bit like scientists. So some people do this the other way around, but like scientists, we go actually. Let's start with some hypotheses. So what might be the options available to us? How if we were going to widen our options knowing what we know now, what might be 234, whatever it is, different options that we could take with this decision. So we widen options, and then we move into a phase of what we call gathering intelligence. And we're gathering intelligence for those two reasons. We're gathering intelligence to help us with that widening because if I've got no experience with something, I've never done something before, then it's going to be quite tricky for me to come up with options. So I might be looking for intelligence that helps me widen my options and come up with more alternatives, or I might be gathering intelligence or and gathering intelligence to help me finally make the decision around some criteria that I might set. So step back, decide how to decide, widen our options, gather intelligence that might help go back and help me come up with more options, or then help me make a decision. After that we're getting into implementation. How do we, how do we really execute well on this decision, everything from tracking the decision to communicating it, to engaging the organisation, to delivering the project, and then consciously putting in that intentional step to say, Okay, we're going to come back and look at the outcome and create some kind of learning loop that allows us to overall, become better decision makers. So those are the kind of big steps that we would jump through, but depending on the decision and its familiarity in your experience, you might spend more or less time at different places in that process.

Scott Allender: 31:59

I was going to ask is that, can that process still be followed when decisions have to get made at pace? I feel like more and more right, the world's turning faster, more pressure, quicker decisions can can leaders? Should they still follow that same sort of methodology?

Jon Bircher: 32:13

Yeah, personally, I think you could jump through it really quickly, or if you can take your time over it. But the important thing is to say, Okay, I've got this decision. Let's not jump straight into making a decision. Let's just take stock. How reversible is it? How risky is it? Is this high stakes? Is it low stakes? Have we got experience here? Is there anybody we know who's got experience here? Because gathering intelligence doesn't necessarily mean going and doing deep research into what's been written about a subject, or what data is available. It could mean speaking to some individuals, right, or having some of the key people in an organisation in a room. So I think there are slow and fast ways of taking each of those steps, but you'll know better than I and many of the people who've been on your podcast before will probably say exactly the same is, you know, we are, we're human beings, right? And we are making so many assumptions. We're much more biassed than we would like to believe. We'd like to think we're objective and logical and rational, but actually, we've got a deep seated emotional core that impacts our decision making capabilities. You know, I make great decisions, perhaps on a day that another day where I'm tired and I'm not well resourced, will be terrible. So there's so much going on, it makes sense to step back first and then they say this decision that's in front of us. I know it needs to be made quickly, so where do I need to put time and energy to make sure it's a better decision than it would have been if I just jumped straight in and made

Jean Gomes: 33:42

it i You said something earlier on about the fact that social scientists know that we making 1000s of decisions a day, and some of those are most of those are unconscious. Their reactivity. How do we get better at becoming more conscious when we're reacting rather than deciding to things that are really important,

Jon Bircher: 34:04

I if I found probably, and it sounds ridiculous, but the amount of leadership teams that you sit in on, I'm sure you've seen the same where they're having a debate and a conversation about someone it's actually quite big decision for the organisation, and nobody's actually pointed out they're making a decision because they're just seeing it as a conversation. And then you suddenly realise that this this debate, let's call it, I'd be be nice. This argument that's happening is because they've got a completely different view about what's happening in the room. This person thinks that's the decision they're making, and this person thinks it's that, and it might only be it might only be subtly different. They've got completely different perspectives on the decision that's being made. So yeah, I think the first and foremost thing is, let's just make visible that a decision is being made. So I'll often be sat in a team meeting or a conversation, I'll say, can we just, can I just put my hand up and. But it seems like we're making a decision here. Are we making a decision and are we clear what the decision is? Are we clear what the core of the issue is that we're trying to decide upon? And I've seen meetings last half a day where people are trying to get to the bottom of what the real issue is, and then actually the decision making is really quick, but because they've been coming from a completely different perspective, they've not aligned on that, stepping back stage,

Jean Gomes: 35:22

they don't know what they're solving for. So is that simply just kind of writing down versions of what that is so that people can look at it and start to debate it?

Jon Bircher: 35:30

Yeah. I mean, that's a really great way of doing it. Is okay, we appear to have a lot of this. Let's just all write down what we think the core of the issue is, what we're solving for, what the decision is. It's a great technique at the end of meetings as well, isn't it? When did we just agree getting everybody to write it down and see often? It's not, yeah, but a great again. It's, it's that we're learning more and more, aren't we, about our perspectives and all the different things that influence how we show up in the world and how we lead. And I think this is only making things better, but it's more complicated, makes it harder, and we need some process, and we need some steps and stages to help us through some of that. But yeah, I think making the decision visible is probably the easiest thing, in some ways, that you

Jean Gomes: 36:14

could do. How do you kind of reduce the kind of emotions around around that? Because when, when we've got different views, and it isn't explicit, that's going to generate a lot of heat in the in the in the conversation, how do you help to kind of lower that barrier, the

Jon Bircher: 36:33

toughness, is too simple an answer, but I think there's, there's something in it, and this Is my own experience as well. Emotion is an important intelligence that we can utilise in decision making. So asking ourselves questions about, why am I feeling this way, and what are these emotions telling me about this decision is important part of the intelligence we talked earlier about where, you know, and I kind of used extremes, but you might have somebody right over here, who's it's all about the gut. It's how I feel. Is just, just something I can't put my finger at all, intuition. Let's call it over here. Someone over here said, no, no, no, no, it's got to be objective, rational. Needs to be data driven, evidence based, you know, etc. And that's quite sort of stare at sort of polar differences. But we need bugs. That's the tricks we you know, we need to think about the sort of evidence, the data, the rational, the experiences. We equally need to think about what our emotions telling us, because, you know, we often know things, don't we in our bodies, if we can only tune in a little bit more we might be able to use that intelligence as part of our overall gathering of intelligence to help us make a better decision. So just to make it real, like when Mark and I were bringing our businesses together, we bought two coaching businesses together as one, as we kind of experimented with some of that, I just had these really overwhelming emotions. I couldn't work out what it was. I just something didn't quite feel right. Wasn't really it wasn't anger, it was like some level of frustration or sadness or there was stuff going on. And I just stopped and asked myself that question, what is what is this? What are these emotions telling me about this decision and what's important. I didn't just leave it there because we've got the kind of relationship allows us to do that. We explored that together, and by exploring, actually the emotional aspect of what I was sensing and feeling, it took us in a completely different direction than we would have taken in terms of the way we set the company up and how it works, and how we work with each other. So I think for me, it's about not discarding emotion and say, How come on. We don't, let's not be emotional about it. It's actually using that alongside other intelligences that we can bring into the mix.

Scott Allender: 38:49

So the emotions you both were experiencing in that did it surface sort of different frames about what you believe the coaching business should look like, how it should function. I'm really interested because I love what you're saying about getting everybody to write down what we're solving for, getting everybody to write down what we agreed. We're talking about leveraging them and understanding the emotions involved. I'm curious about getting people to articulate explicitly what they might believe about the problem we're solving for, right? Like, I believe, you know, I think we're solving for this because I believe that our customer wants x, right? And somebody else says, I think we're doing this because I believe what we really need to do for the business is this. So I'm curious, in your example, if it if it led to beliefs behind the emotion. And do you see that a lot, do you work with people in that sort of framing of the belief they have?

Jon Bircher: 39:37

Yeah, I think in that example, it actually led to a difference in the way the business was set up. And he entire kind of the model that it was set up as I think I would more typically ask people about how they feel about this decision walking in, you know, as part of that step in that, how am I feeling about this? As a decision, to try to put some words and colour to that, and maybe how is that in impacting how I'm framing the decision? Maybe it's about also exploring kind of word pictures and metaphors about as we look at this decision, what, Matt what? What metaphors are we moving towards here? And what is that telling us about how we might need to think about this decision. But I also think there's a great question we should ask up front, which is, this, is this even the right time to make this decision? Yeah, if, if everybody's at the end of a really busy quarter, and we've all been gunning at it, and there's a really important decision to make and everybody's tired, is that the right decision? Is that the right time to make that decision, or is it simply, it's a it's a Friday afternoon, and we're ready for the weekend. And is this too important to rush now and just get off our to do list? Let's come back to and refresh. Or we both know that. I don't know, Monday mornings were at our very best. Well, mornings generally the best. Okay, well, let's just, let's just encode in our organisations, you know, ways of working that we'll only make big decisions first thing in the morning when we're well resourced and nested. Yeah. So I think these are all the different reasons why, for me, decision making is exciting. I think it's like where the rubber hits the road. You know, of leadership, because so much is is made visible when we make a decision, but also so much of you know what I've listened to on your podcast with all your other all your other guests, you know, feeds into this. You know, how resourced are we? What we learning about our emotions? What do we know about our cognition? What does great strategy look like? What do we do with ambiguity? All of this stuff plays out when you've got to make a decision. Yeah,

Jean Gomes: 41:38

I'd love to pick up on that point about ambiguity, because another theme that's kind of been front and centre in the evolving leader is this idea of leaders not necessarily recognising where they are on that spectrum between certainty, risk and uncertainty, and making decisions. You know, like, how do you frame a decision across that spectrum differently? What, what advice have you got for us,

Jon Bircher: 42:04

I think? And there's nothing new here, right? I mean, if you, if you kick up a lot of the sort of early work around agile organisations or lean organisations, I think it's embedded in in that, in a way. But I think one of the greatest ways we can move forward through that stuff is experimentation like, Why? Why do we think we have to find the right answer in a future that doesn't even exist, that we haven't seen yet? Why not put a few experiments out there and test it, rather than feeling we've got to make the decision in a sort of room of people who don't have any ideas, and we've certainly found that's been our way forward with things, but it kind of makes sense logically, like, if a decision is high stakes, it's pretty critical, and actually, if we press the button on it, it's quite irreversible. Why wouldn't we put a little reversible experiment in place that allows us to pull out if it doesn't make sense, or allows us to move from there into something that then we can embed. So I think my Na, my immediate action, my immediate response, is to experiment in that situation. But it also comes back to deciding how to decide which is we need to look at the decision in front of us, the context of it, the level of ambiguity and risk associated with it, and make a decision about how should a decision like this be made? Are there? Are there people out there that have experienced this before that we can draw on their experience that actually does reduce the risk for us in that situation, or make us at least a little bit more confident that the decision we're making is a good one. The other thing I think that works really well is maybe embracing that thinking that I mentioned about Obama, which is getting comfortable with probabilities, or even Annie Duke in how she describes the decision making, is much more like poker than it is like chess. There's a whole layer of chance involved and probabilities involved. And I think you know, rather than being in a room of individuals, a leadership team trying to decide the right way forward, the right answer is to ask people, you know, probability wise, how confident are you that this is the right way forward, or probability rise wise, how much risk is involved in this particular decision, and not necessarily trying to find that everybody's 75% but looking for those outliers, who's the person, if it's legal, and they're putting their hand up and saying, you know, I'm only 5% sure that this is a good idea. I want to hear from that, yeah. I want to understand what they're seeing that I'm not seeing. So I think maybe it's that shift of trying to explore probabilities, look for ways to to use experimentation, that moves us away from this kind of idea that we've got to have a black or white right or wrong answer. How can we how can we have right or wrong answers when a chance is involved and b you know what the future holds, and we're living in. That right now, right the ambiguity of a few little shifts in in the world dynamic, and suddenly the rules completely change.

Jean Gomes: 45:08

Well, that requires us to have a degree of humility that, you know, and there's so much expectation and pressure on us to have have the answers in those in those jobs, often any kind of systematise or allow people to embrace their ignorance in a way that you know makes them feel okay about it? It

Jon Bircher: 45:29

makes me come back to your earlier question about decisiveness or decision making, because maybe great leaders aren't supposed to be decisive. You know, maybe the point here is that they enable, you know, really good quality decision process or business. They enable the organisation to make the best possible decisions. But decisiveness, again, comes with almost like an arrogance, and you can know what the right way forward is. We can't. We can just we can place a bet, and probably the answer is similar to what I might say around critical thinking, which is, it comes back to being curious, not feeling like I've got all the answers, and doing that inquiry and asking good questions and bringing more people in The room be willing to put a hypothesis up there and for it to be pulled down. I love the Liz Wiseman in her book multipliers, which is probably one of my favourite books on leadership, she she talks about how leaders need to become debate makers. You know, for me, that's a part of this, right, which is we don't try to be the person with the answer. We try to be the person who creates the conditions and have great debates to happen, good discussion for the condescension to happen so that we can make better decisions than we would have done without that. And maybe we need to do a bit more of that, bit of debating in our leadership teams, bit of sort of Socratic questioning and all that sort of stuff to uncover okay, we've got these different perspectives. How do we now make a better decision on the back of all of them,

Sara Deschamps: 47:09

welcome back to the evolving leader podcast, and this first episode in Season Eight, as always, if you enjoy what you hear, then please share the podcast across your network and also leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get back to the conversation. So

Scott Allender: 47:27

let's talk about AI a little bit like, how does the emergence of chat, GPT, Gemini, other model techs and modules? How does that influence our decision making? How should we think about CO intelligence and our decision making. What's your thoughts on that? It's funny, isn't it?

Jon Bircher: 47:43

Because I can answer this question. I'll probably answer it completely different in six months than always moving at such a pace. It's just incredible.

Jean Gomes: 47:51

We should timestamp this conversation. Yeah, let's ask AI.

Jon Bircher: 47:57

I'm using it more and more and more in my own decision making. And I'd encourage people to use it more and more in the decision making. You know, I, I would describe, I predominantly use chat, TBT at the moment, and I would predominant, I would, I would describe that as a as a thought partner in helping me make better decisions, because it can pull on all of the models, you know, whether that be, you know, mental models, I don't know, Pareto or first principles or second order thinking. I don't need to remember all of that and then figure out how to, you know, I can ask it questions and say, Okay, here's a decision I'm looking to make. Here's some of the options unexplored. Using first principles helped me understand what assumptions I might be making, what biases might I be exposed to. And so there's a thought partner piece that allows me to tap into it, its knowledge of models and tools and techniques. I recently wanted to come up with more options on an idea that I didn't really know much about. And so I decided to ask it, to take me through de Bono's thinking hats, and to ask me, you know, for a period of time with it, with each hat, and then I would type in my thoughts and answers and then, and it just allowed me to think better. I think it helps as well to isolate some of those biases and assumptions and how I might combat those. I've also found that even when it's something that's more emotional or for me spiritual, like there's a massive spiritual element for me, when I make decisions, I feel like I want to make decisions well, but each pray about those decision and it doesn't. I thought it might discount it and but what I found with youth integrity is then it has some really great reflective questions about values, about I asked what the other day, it said something like so I'm intrigued. What does weight. Thing on God, mean, for you, you know, and it's like, where did that? Where did it get that from? Like, and it's honestly, in some part of some I've asked it. So for me, it's a thought partner that starts to get me more and help me to make better decisions. I'm not asking it to make a decision for me, but I'm helping. I'm using what I would do with someone in a coaching capacity to think something through when I haven't got maybe somebody I want to think it through with. And the final thing I think it does, which is is very helpful, is you can then say, right, we've been doing this. We've been we've been playing with this for the last couple of hours. And can you just summarise where I'm at in all of this thinking, Where, where, where, which options seem to be bubbling to the surface based on all of the responses and questions, and so it's helping me through that process.

Scott Allender: 50:44

I love that you're saying partnering, as opposed to sort of outsourcing it, because I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the potential for if we don't use it, well, can it make it make us worse decision makers over time? Like I'm a terrible speller. Now, I used to be a great speller, but auto, auto correct. It's killed my spelling, right? I go to write things down by hand, and I'm like, How do I spell that again? Right? So I'm just curious, like, as these technologies evolve and emerge, if people become more dependent on them, not using them as the appropriate partner, but almost outsourcing the decision a bit, will that actually kind of work against us in our ability to make

Jon Bircher: 51:21

decisions. I mean, I don't know whether people would outsource a decision like Troy. Shall I marry this woman or not? Shall I take this job or not? Shall I invest in this business? Or maybe they will. Maybe they will. But I I feel like with something like decision making, we are so under trained on it. Coming back to our point, I haven't really had training on it, that if everybody just embraced use like asking chat, TBT to push a decision through a couple of models that we know are good mental models and good frameworks for decision making, if we believe that that would be helpful in catalysing greater thought for them to make a better decision, then I'm pretty sure that will be a good thing overall, because it's not like spelling, where we we were good at it, and now we might erode it. Lots of people aren't making great decisions because they're not. They're just going with their gut, or they're not actually making the decision and spiralling and stuck in a loop of procrastination. So I don't know. It's early days, right? As I said, you might answer that differently. I'm only experimenting with it myself. Sure? Yeah, my best experience, just as a little side man, is I tried it out with my son, who had some big decisions to make about university and Gap Year and different courses that he could have done, and I tried to have some coaching, like conversations with him, which clearly didn't go down very well. Go down very well, because I missed out if he's myself. So I punched a load of stuff into chat GPT, and essentially got it to coach him to an answer, and then printed it over. So there you go. Now you make a decision based on all those different outputs, yeah, and say, instead of him going, I'm stuck. I don't know how to make it. He had a series of thoughtful reflections he could reflect on and then helped him make a really good decision. Yeah, so, yeah. Just as an aside,

Jean Gomes: 53:08

this makes me think about the moral component of decision making, because we talked quite a lot about emotional and rational elements of it and the social part of it. But you know, a lot of the really important decisions that leaders have got to make are also got to factor in that moral reasoning component. How do we how do we think about that? Do you think

Jon Bircher: 53:31

my immediate response is connected to that whole debate piece? Because I feel like that's going way back in history to how do you do really good reasoning and around ethical and moral factors, because different people have different codes. And I think debating is a really great way of seeing a side, reflecting on where the blind spots might be or the assumptions or the evidence is or isn't, it allows you to sit in someone else's shoes and argue from a different perspective, and to have greater empathy for where they're at because you're taking their position on something and and often, where you land is different where than where either party would have started in the first place. So the natural place I would go is bringing some kind of moral, ethical debate into the decision, especially decisions that have that more closely aligned to the decision itself, is would be a great thing to do more often. And one of the questions we ask up front when deciding how to decide is, you know, what values need to be honoured in this decision? And it's just again, making it front and centre, or as a leader, you might say, you know, what aspects of my character do I really want to bring in and make present in the way I go about this decision? So again, you can not the answer is, always take a step back and decide how to decide. But I think you can almost build your own principles up front about the sorts of questions you. To ask before you start an important decision process. That's my immediate response is like, capture some stuff up front about what's important and make sure there's something like a debate or an element in the process that allows you to see different perspectives on the ethic or moral arguments that feels like we're going the other end of AI, right? I'm almost imagining kind of these guys in a in Greece somewhere, reasoning and arguing and having those sort of ethical moral debate.

Jean Gomes: 55:31

How do you think decision making is changing based on the kind of conversations you're having with leaders and the way that you see decisions playing out? Do you see any changes in the way that it's it's operating?

Jon Bircher: 55:44

Either I've got in on this on at the right time, or it's something to do with, you know, the fact that teams are more diverse, or the fact that we're facing greater ambiguity, or there's pressure on speed, you know, whether it's all of these converging factors, when I first started talking about it, it seemed like there were there were less people. People got it, but not necessarily wanted to do something about it. And I'm starting to now speak to organisations again, very excited about, how could we build this into our organisation? How could we train our people? How could we embed it as a way of being? I'm seeing organisations that, in parallel, to me, having that conversation, have just started that or starting it with us. And so I'm starting to see some momentum, actually, that people are recognising that we've got to get better at decision making. I think some of that is too many decisions keep getting escalated to the top. So you've got the people at the top. Too few people are actually making the big decisions for organisations, and there's that desire for sort of autonomy within organisations. But I think the biggest light bulb, certainly for great leaders, is they're recognising that we've got this diverse group of people, this amazing talent pool, and yet we're not necessarily getting the right people in the room at the right time to make better decisions. So yeah, I think the momentum feels like it's moving in the right direction.

Scott Allender: 57:11

This has all been super, super helpful. Thank you for all your insights. Is there any sort of final message or thought you want to leave with our listeners?

Jon Bircher: 57:20

Maybe there's a thought and a practical like the thought for me is decisions matter, and I genuinely believe our life is made up of the decisions we make. The story we tell is based on the decisions that we make. So invest in becoming a better decision maker, is my view. And I'm on that journey, and others are on that journey, but I think it's a really important journey. And then if we want to become a better decision maker, I firmly believe the first thing to do is to before you move into decision making, be clear that you're making decisions, and take that step back and start asking yourself some questions about that, deciding how to decide, typed questions up from and if you get stuck and you find yourself procrastinating, try some experiments. Try to find some easy nudges forward that will help you step into the unknown without having to feel like you've got to get it right first time.

Jean Gomes: 58:15

John, it's a real pleasure. I wish we had a little bit longer, but perhaps when you have continued to think more about this. We'll get you back on again to see how the journey is unfolding for you. But this has been, you know, wonderful. Thank you so much.

Jon Bircher: 58:30

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.