Consequences and Tradeoffs

1. Consequences and Tradeoffs Session 5

2. Consequences • What happens when you pull the trigger, i.e., pick one alternative from a set.

3. Why Should we Care about Consequences? • It is the reason why we make decisions – it impacts the objectives, which impacts the bottom-line, i.e, goals and values. • Uni-dimensional consequences = less worries, multi-dimensional = more worries. • Alternatives are rarely selective in the consequences they serve us. • As the number of alternatives increases, the more concerned we should be about consequences.

4. When Should you Think about Consequences • Before the decision • Executing the decision-making sequence. • After the decision • As part of the learning from past decisions.

5. Challenges to Visualizing Consequences • Inaccurate – plainly different from what we thought. • Incomplete – the set of consequences considered is smaller the set that actually plays out. • Imprecise – variability around our expectation • Number of Stakeholders

6. What Consequences? Consequences

7. Steps to Generating Consequences • Time-shift: Imagine that the alternative has been chosen, now visualize the consequences. • Free-form description of consequences of each alternative, given the objectives. • Eliminate dominated alternatives. • Organize the remaining alternatives in a consequences table.

8. Generate the Consequences Table • For each alternative, describe the extent to which it impacts your specific objective. • Too narrow a description will get you bogged down. • Too broad a description will get you nowhere.

9. Specifics – Consequence Table

10. Rounding up Consequences • Try out the alternative, if possible. It is has the same effect of time-shift. • Alternate between verbal and scale-based descriptions of consequences. • Calibrate the level of precision for the scales. Too precise, you waste time, too imprecise, you wind up not getting enough information. • Too much incompleteness, or imprecision, will warrant a decision to collect more information.

11. For Marriage Children (if it please God) Constant companion (friend in old age) Object to be beloved and play with Better than dog, anyhow. Home and someone to take care of house Charms of music and female chit-chat. These are good for one’s health Force to visit and receive relatives Terrible loss of time It is intolerable to spend life…like a neuter bee…working working. Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House Only to picture yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, and books and music… Against Marriage No children No on to care for in old age Freedom to go where one liked Choice of society and little of it Conversation of clever men at clubs Not forced to visit relatives, and, Bend to every trifle To have the expense and anxiety of children Perhaps quarrelling. Loss of time Cannot read Fatness and idleness Anxiety and responsibility Less money for books Forced to gain one’s bread But, too much work is not good Perhaps wife won’t like London Then the sentence is banishment and Degradation with indolent idle fool To Marry or To Not Marry? Decision? Marry, Marry, Marry, Q.E.D.