‘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)

Social:

Instagram           @evolvingleader

LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast

Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

Bluesky            @evolvingleader.bsky.social

YouTube           @evolvingleader

 

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

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

Episode Transcript

Scott Allender (00:09):
Hey folks, welcome to another special
edition of the evolving leader,where Jean and I had the
privilege of being together inperson in his studio outside of
London and talking to a guest inperson. Can't wait to play this
episode for you in just amoment. But before we do, Jean,
how are you feeling today, myfriend,

Jean Gomes (00:27):
I'm feeling excellent. I'm feeling really
good. I'm feeling pumped withenergy, and I'm also feeling a
lot of gratitude for you makingit over to the UK to do the
this, this conversation inperson, because it makes such a
difference. It's, it's, it'sphenomenal. And I'm also feeling
very grateful to the guest thatmade this show special, John

(00:47):
Bircher. He's a decision coach,and I think you know what he
highlighted, there is somethingthat's probably in the wind for
everybody, which is nobody everteaches us how to make
decisions. We're kind ofexpected to learn it from the
imbibe it through osmosis bywatching other people doing it.
And so when you ask people, youknow, how do you make decisions,

(01:08):
they don't really know. And thenthe other kind of problems that
John was talking about in termsof, well, a lot of people think
they're good decision makers,but then you say, are you good
making decisions with otherpeople? And not so much. And do
we learn from our decisions? Youknow, these are kind of like
simple, simple questions thatthe answer is no, not really no.

(01:31):
And given the fact that leadersnumber one job is actually to
make decisions, that's quiteinteresting observation. So I'm
really excited to get into theshow. How are you feeling?
Scott,

Scott Allender (01:43):
everything you just said 100% I don't think we
talk about it enough, right? Ithink the assumption that we are
good decision makers. But toyour point and to John's point,
can we do it collaboratively,and are we reflective on our
decisions? Certainly, we allmake decisions that we regret,
but do we maximise theopportunity to learn from those
mistakes and also then to informhow we make better decisions in

(02:05):
the future. So I think it's aconversation we need to be
consistently having as leadersin a more uncertain world. So
let's tune in to this importantconversation.

Jean Gomes (02:18):
Scott, it's so good that we're together finally,
after four and a half years ofdoing this show completely
virtually. How you feeling?

Scott Allender (02:26):
I'm feeling so grateful to be with you. We've
been talking about doing inperson shows for four and a half
years. Yeah, and today's thefirst day, it's good to be near
you. Yeah, you too many. Zoomdelay, and I want to talk to
you. I actually hear what you'resaying in real time. That's

Jean Gomes (02:42):
great. Well, we'll be able not to interrupt each
other now, so that'd be, that'dbe good. We get some visual
cues.

Scott Allender (02:48):
Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited. Thanks
for, thanks for having me herewith

Jean Gomes (02:52):
you. Excellent.
Well, I'm feeling really excitedabout today because we I've got
a guest who I've been talking tofor, 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 lifebloodof leadership and how
organisations function. So,John, welcome to the evolving

(03:13):
leader. It's great to have youhere. Thank you for having me.
How are you feeling?

Jon Bircher (03:19):
I think I'm feeling the love. I mean, it's really,
I'm excited, because you guysare excited to see each other,
which is really cool. No, I'mgenuinely, I'm in a really good
place. Actually, this year hasbeen a exciting year. I'm
buzzing, little bit nervousabout where we go today, though.
Now I'm in a good

Jean Gomes (03:33):
place. So you had a really successful career and and
it had, you know, some differentphases to it. So why did you get
in? Can you tell us a little bitabout why you you you move from
that into becoming a decisioncoach.

Jon Bircher (03:48):
I'd like to say it was very clearly planned out
decision, but it wasn't quitelike that. And I guess the easy
answer would be, decisionsmatter, and our life's made up
of the decisions we make. That'sthe kind of quick answer. I
think it was a combination ofthings. Like, I'd come out of a
career in leadership and inparticular, strategy consulting,

(04:09):
and spent my life really helpingin the world. I was in
pharmaceutical and biotechcompanies. Think about the
choices they were making withthe assets they were bringing
through, and the brands theywere launching. And I started
coaching, and realised that manyof the reasons people came to a
coaching conversation wasbecause they had tricky

(04:30):
decisions to make. And I guessthat passion for coaching and
then recognising that a lot ofwhat 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 digaround a little bit and say, I
think there's a there's an unmetneed here that kind of matches

(04:50):
my passion. And I I'm not quiteconvinced that people are being
well equipped to be betterdecision makers. Was

Scott Allender (04:58):
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? Didyou explore, like, patterns of
fear around making the wrongchoice? Or, you know, what was
the what was the number one,like, motivator for people
coming to you? I'm not

Jon Bircher (05:14):
convinced people, and maybe this is a topic for a
conversation, but I'm notconvinced people always knew
they were making a decision.
There was a decision in front ofthem. And I think what I was
starting to notice, maybe it'sjust like, I think as coaches,
we attract certain types ofpeople our experiences, or where
we show up. And I was finding, Iwas meeting quite a lot of
people who were at point intheir life where they were
questioning, Okay, what's next?

(05:37):
You know, you hear that kind ofadage of, I've kind of gone to
that mountain I think I've gotanother mountain in me. Don't
really know what it is. And thatwas my experience, by the way, I
come out of this kind of 25years in the pharma, biotech
world, most of that leading astrategy consulting firm, and
then, and then at this moment,where it's like, do I want to
carry on doing this, or do Imove towards something else? And

(06:00):
so I think there's this, there'san attraction of people that
were coming and were askingquestions about what next in my
life, you know, there, I'm notquite sure what it is, but I
don't think I want to carry ondoing what I'm doing. And so
those are big questions, andactually, in some ways, more
important than a product beinglaunched, right? It's about
where do I want to go next? Whodo I want to be? Type question,

(06:22):
questions. So that's probablywhere it started. And then I
just started asking questionspeople about decision making as
a skill. Did they feel it was askill they'd they'd spent time
on or learned or been educatedin? And I kept finding almost
the same answer, which is, it'sreally critical. The more senior
you get, the harder thedecisions are, the more complex

(06:43):
the decisions are, the morerisky the decisions are. And
then the other answer was thatI'm I've never been trained on
it, and 99.9% of the time,that's quite anecdotal, but
people were saying I've neverhad any training on decision
making at all in my wholecareer. And these are senior

Jean Gomes (07:01):
leaders. That's fascinating, isn't it? I mean,
it may be a truism that decisionmaking is the, you know, the key
to making a business work. Imean, that's, that's what we're
paid to do as leaders. So why isit left to chance? Do you think,
why do organisations not teachleaders how to make decisions?

Jon Bircher (07:21):
I feel a little bit like, if you you know, whether
you look at Harvard BusinessReview, or you look like a Korn
Ferry report, or, you know, whenyou look at these various
different Forbes, or whatever itmight be, who explore, what are
the skills you need to be agreat leader, you don't that
often see decision making ordecisiveness pulled out. You do
sometimes, but not that often.
And I wonder whether this ispart of the challenge. It kind

(07:42):
of gets wrapped up in otherthings. You know, I think you
had a guest on who talked aboutbeing a great strategic thinker,
or you have, you know, you haveskills around critical thinking
or leadership. More generally,there's part of me that thinks
it gets wrapped up in thoseother things, and therefore
doesn't find its way as aspecific skill that gets pulled

(08:04):
out and developed and nurturedand and therefore, what really
happens is people have to learnon the job, and they just do it
by experience. I

Scott Allender (08:14):
was going to point that out too. I was
wondering, you know, do weconflate it into the experience
module, right, or the experiencesort of like you have this
experience. So I assume you mustbe really good at making
decisions in this field, right?
But, you know, we'd like tothink of decisions as purely
rational, and probably like tothink of ourselves as rational
decision makers. But decisionsare quite messy, right? The
whole process is quite messy. Socan you tell us a little bit

(08:36):
about your your frame? I don't

Jon Bircher (08:40):
know. It'd be really interesting if you could
kind of get a live feed from theaudience listening, because my
sense is, especially when youstart to look at profiling
individuals and how they feelabout decisions, is, I it's not
this simple, because it'sprobably a sort of sliding scale
around a range of factors. But Ithink different people feel
differently about decisions. Sosome people say, Yeah, I think,

(09:02):
you know, decision making isrational and objective. And I'm
quite rational objective. Iwonder whether actually a lot of
what we hear is the opposite.
Great decision makers. They'vejust got a bit of magic. They're
decisive. They go with theirgut. They just got a really good
sense of what's the right answeror the wrong answer. You hear
it, don't you hear it inrecruitment. You hear it in
strategy. I just, you know, I'vegot all the evidence in
evidences here, but that's thedecision we're going to make,

(09:24):
because I believe it's right.
And then you think, is that whatwe're hearing as well? So
therefore that sort of lendsitself to we can't train it,
because it's not rational andobjective. It's just this sort
of somehow special secret saucethat some leaders have. And
hopefully, if we chuck them inand help them to become leaders,
they'll suddenly become more

Jean Gomes (09:43):
decisive. So in the sense what you're saying is that
we're not really all talking thesame language about what a
decision is, because some peoplethink it's logic. Some people
think it's kind of like thatemotional, social kind of mix of
things. What's your day?
Definition of a decision. Imean, it sounds a bit ridiculous
to ask, because it probablyseems obvious, but do you do you

(10:04):
start there?

Jon Bircher (10:08):
Yeah. And I wonder whether is it decision, or is it
decisive? You're decisivebecause you kind of know the
answer, and you've got a goodgut feel. So if we kind of say
leaders need to be decisive, itsays something different than, I
think, than if we said leadersneed to be great decision makers
or better decision makers. Thatfeels more like it could be open

(10:29):
to rational and emotional andother 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, Ihaven't articulated it this way
before, but I think there's astarting point, which is, where
are you on that sort of spectrumof how you feel about decision

(10:49):
making? And that could be thespeed you prefer to make
decisions. It could be yourattitude to risk it could be how
objective you are versusintuitive you are, there's a
range of different aspects thatwe should be thinking about
before we start decision making,because I see leaders who would
say one of the things thatchallenges the most is they
overthink, and they're a bit ofa procrastinator. They're kind

(11:12):
of trying to make sure they'vegot all of the data and
information in place in order tomove forward with a decision.
And you've got the other end ofthe spectrum. You've got
decision makers who are justgoing with their going with
their gut, making reallyimpulsive decision, and the rest
of the organisation is going canjust slow down.

Scott Allender (11:27):
I was also wondering if you experience
people I feel like I'veexperienced this in the coaching
work that I do, where sometimespeople are chasing the
certainty, they have lowtolerance for uncertainty and
risk, and they want to get allthe information, and they get a
stuck in analysis paralysis. Andthen I talk to people like
you're talking about, wherethey're just sort of almost
bulldozing trust my gut, andthen there seems to be, like a

(11:49):
third group, probably more thana third group, and another group
that they're, they're reallyconcerned with the optics of the
decision. So they're, they're,they actually don't trust their
gut enough. Or they're sort ofthinking because they're
actually concerned with how it'sgoing to land politically, or
sort of how it will be seen. Isit the popular decision to make?
I don't want to make a decisionthat's not going to garner me
the right kind of praise, right?
So do you? Did you find that alot in your coaching work,

Jon Bircher (12:13):
it feels like that's quite late to Jean's
question as Emma, which is, Imean, this is what I find
fascinating about decisionmaking, is it it kind of somehow
holds together all thesedifferent aspects. You know,
there's the logical like it.
Does this make sense? Is theregood data? Is it evidence? You
know, have I engaged everybodyin the process? Have I kind of
stepped through the right stepsthat make sense for my

(12:33):
organisation? What about myintuition and my gut and my
experiences and what maybe myfriends or my partner has told
me, you know, so there's anemotional element in that for
some of us, we might be on aspiritual journey. So there
might be a kind of like, youknow, spiritual aspect, or a
prayerful aspect of thinkingabout a decision and, you know,

(12:54):
and then if I look at what Ithink is fascinating, even in
some of the guests you've hadalong, you know, along the way,
and you think about things likethe way we think, and our meta
cognition, and we think aboutour interoception and what our
Morleys are saying. And then youthink about attitudes to risk,
and all of these things play outactually when you think about

(13:14):
making a decision, including asa leader. You know, my
leadership is made visible, notjust in the decisions I make,
but the way I go about makingdecisions and how I take people
on the journey. So my values, mycharacter, my moral code, all
plays out actually in some ofthe big decisions I make. And so
I think, I think it'sfascinating that all of those

(13:34):
aspects have to play a role. Andyet, how often in organisations
or even in our own lives, do wefind ourselves in the middle of
a decision? We're making adecision before even realising
we're in a

Jean Gomes (13:47):
decision? What are the kind of recurring problems
you see when you're coachingpeople 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 ownjourney on this, because there's
just so much emerging sciencethat come that's coming out that
I now can see through this lensof that has an impact on
decision making. And so I'mseeing it not just in the people
I'm working with, but I'm seeingit in my own life and in my

(14:16):
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 howwe're deciding. So we call it
like deciding how to decide. Butif I was going to kind of use
your type of language, I wouldprobably say it's the meta

(14:37):
decision. Yeah, we've got to,we've got to step back and think
about this decision that we'remaking and ask ourselves some
really great questions aboutthat. So I think the skill
really underneath all of thisis, can we ask better questions
that stimulate better thinking?
Because if we can do some betterthinking, that doesn't
necessarily mean we take weeksor months over, but if we can do

(14:57):
some better thinking, we. Willprobably make better decisions
that therefore mean we becomebetter leaders, and hopefully
those better decisions by betterleaders create a better world.
And goodness we need a betterworld 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'ssomething rooted in stepping
back, thinking about what's infront of us, making visible that
there is a decision, and thenasking ourselves all the people
around us some really greatquestions that help us decide
how to decide.

Jean Gomes (15:37):
In one of our previous conversations, you said
something about that reallystruck home to me, which was a
lot of leaders think they'regreat decision makers, except
when they're with other people.
So, you know, making decisionstogether becomes very
problematic often. So I'm great,I'm a great individual decision
maker, but am I great at makingdecisions with others? You'd say

(15:59):
a little bit about about whatyou're learning with

Jon Bircher (16:02):
that. Yeah, I I feel like even those individuals
who see themselves as quitedecisive and good decision
makers, and I'm not going tojudge whether they are or not,
would would say that it getsmuch more complicated than other
people are in the room. Yeah,right, because now I've got a
whole series of other inputs toplay out. And I think it plays
to your point, Scott, about likenow we make right decisions and

(16:25):
culturally, right decisions foran organisation and move in the
right direction. So I think mostpeople would probably say it
does get harder. And maybe thereason that this is of of today,
of this time, is because we'vetried to create organisations
that are made up of diverseindividuals. We've realised that

(16:45):
it doesn't quite make sense tokind of recruit people that look
and feel just like us and reallywant that diversity, which is
brilliant, but it's onlybrilliant if we tap into it and
so, and I'm not necessarilytalking about religious or
cultural or ethnic, ethnic ordiversity, I'm probably getting
to the heart of like, cognitivediversity. So if we're going to

(17:07):
tap into all these differentpeople with all their
experiences and challenges andways of doing the world and
biases and perspectives andassumptions, all that stuff,
then we then it's going to getharder, even though, ultimately,
if we do it, well, the decisionis probably going to be better
one. And so there, I think, isthe is the challenge. How do you
when you've got a leadershipteam, for example, of 12 people

(17:31):
in a room with differentfunctions, with different
geographies, with differentperspectives and experiences,
how do you go about frombeginning to end, making a
decision, implementing thatdecision and getting better at
decision making. And I thinkthat's where it gets tough.

Scott Allender (17:48):
Have you looked at the conditions that need to
exist in those rooms for beingable to solicit and listen to
the diverse perspectives andexperiences?

Jon Bircher (17:56):
I heard somebody say the other day, we shouldn't
give answers, we should onlygive 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'mgoing to give you a response. Is
it the right answer? I don't Idon't know. I think one of the
things is creating space tothink I'm a real fan of the work

(18:16):
of Nancy Klein, and the time tothink context of creating
conditions that ignite someone'sindependent thinking. And we
live in a world where we like tointerrupt and give a
perspective, or we listen inorder to be able to respond to
someone else's answer. And so Ithink there's something about
creating conditions that aregood for better thinking. I

(18:38):
think some of the tools,perhaps, like, you know, old
tools like de Bono's thinkinghats are very helpful because
they allow us to synchronouslythink as teams. So instead of,
when someone's coming up with anidea, someone else is poo
pooing, it is actually, let'sall come up with ideas together,
and then let's pull them aparttogether, or have a specific

(18:59):
team, you know, like redteaming, where they're coming in
and challenging something, butnot everybody is challenging at
different times. I think there'ssome structuring of the
environment and some tools andtechniques we can use to better
think together. I think one ofthe downsides that we tend to
find in an environment that isquite easily solvable is when
we're thinking about decisionmaking in a well, individually

(19:23):
or collectively, is there'salmost two, two big phases that
are going on when we're togetherin a room, or a series of events
of being together in a room. Theone is more divergent and one is
more convergent. There's theperiod of time in the decision
process where we are wideningour options, looking at
alternatives. It's like thatmore ideation phase, but then

(19:44):
there comes a point where youcan't just keep coming up with
more and more options andalternatives. You've got to
evaluate those and ultimatelyselect a way forward. And so
different schools and differenttools and techniques you would
use, and different environmentsyou would create, depending on
which. Of those parts of theprocess you're going through,
but we tend to convolute them,and often what we'll do is we

(20:07):
can't somebody comes with a preprepared business case on three
options, and then the groupdecide on right and we haven't
had any input in the differentoptions. We haven't done any
collective thinking aboutoptions and alternatives that
will be better than the onesthat are already being tabled.
And yet we now have to make adecision 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 thatparticular environment. So I
pause because it made me thinkback to your question earlier,
Jean, which is, why areorganisations leaving it to
chance? I wonder whether part ofthe reason organisations lead it
to chance, to use your words, isbecause there's, there's,
there's, there's a lot ofescalation that happens with

(21:02):
decision making. So people goaway, they do all the work, they
come and then it gets escalatedthe most senior person, a lot of
the big decisions happen at thevery top. We don't many, I can't
think of many organisationsreally push the critical
decisions, the real finaldecisions, down. So I wonder
whether that's part of it, yeah,is actually you don't get the
really meaty, high stakedecisions until you really,

(21:24):
really see it. And even the onesthat you do play out in seeing
your roles somebody else isstill making the ultimate

Scott Allender (21:31):
decision. Yeah, and then you might be making the
decision just based on theexecutive summary somebody put
before you, as opposed tonecessarily, really having
understood the problem that isbeing 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 theright approach to this decision
making? Actually, wouldn't it bebetter if we had people engaged
through the whole piece a intheory, the decision should be a
better decision, but all thatchange, process, work that might

(22:04):
need to happen has already kindof been done. Right? People have
been on the journey. And, youknow, I'm looking across there,
and I see Patrick Lencioni, youknow, Patrick Lencioni said, you
know, people don't necessarilyneed to have their their
decision or their view chosen.
They just need to feel valuedand heard in process, and if we
valued and heard the rightpeople in the journey, then
maybe they're all on board withthe decision

Jean Gomes (22:26):
anyway. Yeah, we talk about learning from
decisions, because often we'reso focused on just progress, we
don't look back at thosedecisions and whether they we
made the right decision or evenknew what the decision we were
making. Can we talk about whatyour 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 weavoid it and we don't do it. I
think it's difficultindividually, and I think it's
difficult collectively, andwe're still grappling with that
actually, like, how do you makethis stuff really practical?
Because the majority of authorsout there, experts out there
that are talking about decisionmaking, would agree with a

(23:09):
statement Daniel Kahneman said,you know, which is the best
thing we can possibly do, is tostart journaling about this
stuff. To journal about thedecisions we make and what we
thought would happen, and thenlook back and see what actually
happened and how much of thedecision was down to my great
deciding and my greatimplementing, or how much was
actually down to chance or luckor all the context. And it's

(23:30):
very easy to have an overinflated view of your decision
making capability if you'renever looking back seeing that
actually just got lucky, quite alot. And the challenge, though,
is probably the same as you findit in the coaching senses,
regular journaling is difficult,even for some of the most
reflective coaches. It's quite adifficult thing to do. And if we
believe a lot of the socialscience that we're making 30,

(23:51):
35,000 decisions every day,obviously, a lot of them are not
conscious, but there's a lot ofdecisions we're making, what are
we going to do? Start loggingthem all. I mean, we wouldn't
make any decisions because weany decisions because we've been
writing a very long journey. SoI think it's getting that
balance right. And so what, whatwe're probably spending more
time advising, supporting andpractising ourselves, is being a

(24:13):
bit more pragmatic with thatstuff. So it might be what we do
is the big stuff that we startour week. And one of the first
things we ask ourselves at thebeginning of the week, this is
my business partner and I, is,Have we got any big decisions we
need to make this week? Is thereanything we want to talk about?
Is there anything we want toexplore in bit more detail? If
there's something, then we'llkind of jump through whatever is
appropriate in terms of thatdecision making process. And at

(24:36):
the end of the week, as part ofour 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 aboutlearning from them or capturing
and we'll capture that in ashort little journal, and then
we'll come back to them maybethree months, six months later,
and review. And that's maybe akind of practice that other
people could put in place. So mybig decisions, I'm just going to

(24:57):
capture some key thoughts aboutthe decision. I. Made the
context I was in, how I wasfeeling at the time, what I
predicted the outcome would be,with what level of confidence,
and then come back to it andlook in, look at what actually
happened. And we could do thatin business with businesses as
well. Couldn't we, like, Ithink, as a short business log,
you know that you're lookingback at the decisions you've

(25:18):
made as a team that captured,you know, here, here's the
decision we made, here's some ofthe alternatives we discounted,
and why this is what we expectedto happen. And then you come
back, whatever the right timeperiod is, three or six months
later, and say, How did it go?
You start to become a betterdecision maker, because you
starting to learn what in thisprocess 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 bookabout that, we often confuse the
result with the decision, and wewe discount luck and all the
other factors that that notionof 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 theresults of the or the outcome of
the decision, you know, throughthe lens of the result, as
opposed to whether it was a goodor bad decision in the first
place. And I guess it's a littlebit like framing, if you have a
good outcome, and you look in onthat with hindsight, then you

(26:19):
assume it was a good decision.
And that's not always the case.
And she runs that thoughtexperiment with a very famous
American football game where shelooks in on it and says,
actually, if we did a littlethought experiment here and had
a different and saw a differentoutcome, would you think it was
a bad decision? No, we wouldn't.
We think it's good decision. Andso we have this, we kind of lean
towards, when we get a goodoutcome, we say that was down to

(26:41):
our great skill, and when it'snot 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'mthinking, I feel like we're
taught to defend bad decisionsfrom the time we're little
right, as soon as our parentscatch us doing something we
shouldn't be doing, we sort ofcome up with the excuse. Well,
you know, he made me do it, or Iwas tricked into that, or we're
always kind of like baddecisions lead to a bad result,
and that could, that could hurtme in some way or affect me

(27:08):
negatively. So I need to come upwith, I need to outsource the
reason for my poor choices. Sowhat's like the mindset shift
that has to happen where webreak through maybe that natural
emotional resistance to wantingto 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 betterdecisions than we would if we
didn't put the time and energyinto it. Because there is a
whole piece here, which is wecan't control it. So I think it
was Obama that said, like, youknow, the ultimately, the

(27:46):
decisions that you get whenyou're at the top are horrible
ones that nobody wants to make,and there isn't a good answer,
you know, and therefore, you'vegot to get comfortable with
probabilities. But, um, youknow, it's that idea that we've
just got to get more comfortablewith that ambiguity. We you
know, we've got to be okay withthe fact that we can't predict
the outcome, but what we can dois is look at all of the

(28:06):
intelligence we have around usand make a better decision than
we might have done if we justjump straight in and and I think
so. Part of it, for me, is aboutfocusing on better but also part
of it is what's in our control.
And Russ and Schumacher wrote abook called Winning decisions
many years ago, and it's stillgot some really core

(28:28):
fundamentals in it. And theyessentially say that the one
thing we can do is we can focuson having a good decision or
process. So and I think lots ofother authors have gone on to
say, is that good same one thingwe can control. We can have a
good process, and we can makesure we go through some of those
steps, think about the decisionwe're making, jump through the

(28:49):
right steps, and then once we'vemade the decision, execute it.
Well, that's all that's in ourcontrol. And sometimes we'll
have bad luck, and some timewe'll get just rewards. But we
can't judge the decision on theoutcome. We have to judge the
decision on did we go through anappropriate process? What's

Jean Gomes (29:07):
your kind of favourite process? You've you've
studied lots of different kindof approaches. What? What are
the kind of things that youthink are most helpful?

Jon Bircher (29:17):
Maybe, if we come back to this podcast in a few
years time, I might have changedmy mind, but I I've when you
start researching, you realisethere's so many different
processes, like criticalthinking or something. It's just
so many out there. It'soverwhelming, so many acronyms,
so many funky names. And I andwe just made a decision we
weren't going to do that, thatwe would just hold together the
best thinking of all the peoplethat gone before us and just

(29:39):
say, actually, these are somereally great steps that we
believe you should step through.
Sometimes you need to dial thisbit up. Sometimes this bit can
be dialled back. Sometimes,because of your preferences or
organisational style, you needto spend more time here.
Sometimes you can move throughthe through the process quite
quickly. And those maybe I'manswering your earlier question
there for. Framework of thinkingreally is, there's some great

(30:01):
questions you can ask aroundcertain steps in the process.
And those process steps for uswould be, let's start by
deciding how to decide. Let'stake a big step back. Ask
ourselves some big questions,like, what is the core of the
issue? Is this even the righttime to make this decision? Who
needs to be in the room, andwhat intelligence do we need to
challenge our biases that kindof questions right up front.

(30:22):
Once we do that, we almost act abit like scientists. So some
people do this the other wayaround, but like scientists, we
go actually. Let's start withsome hypotheses. So what might
be the options available to us?
How if we were going to widenour options knowing what we know
now, what might be 234, whateverit is, different options that we
could take with this decision.
So we widen options, and then wemove into a phase of what we

(30:45):
call gathering intelligence. Andwe're gathering intelligence for
those two reasons. We'regathering intelligence to help
us with that widening because ifI've got no experience with
something, I've never donesomething before, then it's
going to be quite tricky for meto come up with options. So I
might be looking forintelligence that helps me widen
my options and come up with morealternatives, or I might be
gathering intelligence or andgathering intelligence to help

(31:09):
me finally make the decisionaround some criteria that I
might set. So step back, decidehow to decide, widen our
options, gather intelligencethat might help go back and help
me come up with more options, orthen help me make a decision.
After that we're getting intoimplementation. How do we, how
do we really execute well onthis decision, everything from

(31:31):
tracking the decision tocommunicating it, to engaging
the organisation, to deliveringthe project, and then
consciously putting in thatintentional step to say, Okay,
we're going to come back andlook at the outcome and create
some kind of learning loop thatallows us to overall, become
better decision makers. So thoseare the kind of big steps that
we would jump through, butdepending on the decision and

(31:53):
its familiarity in yourexperience, you might spend more
or less time at different placesin that process.

Scott Allender (31:59):
I was going to ask is that, can that process
still be followed when decisionshave to get made at pace? I feel
like more and more right, theworld's turning faster, more
pressure, quicker decisions cancan leaders? Should they still
follow that same sort ofmethodology?

Jon Bircher (32:13):
Yeah, personally, I think you could jump through it
really quickly, or if you cantake your time over it. But the
important thing is to say, Okay,I've got this decision. Let's
not jump straight into making adecision. Let's just take stock.
How reversible is it? How riskyis it? Is this high stakes? Is
it low stakes? Have we gotexperience here? Is there
anybody we know who's gotexperience here? Because

(32:34):
gathering intelligence doesn'tnecessarily mean going and doing
deep research into what's beenwritten about a subject, or what
data is available. It could meanspeaking to some individuals,
right, or having some of the keypeople in an organisation in a
room. So I think there are slowand fast ways of taking each of
those steps, but you'll knowbetter than I and many of the

(32:56):
people who've been on yourpodcast before will probably say
exactly the same is, you know,we are, we're human beings,
right? And we are making so manyassumptions. We're much more
biassed than we would like tobelieve. We'd like to think
we're objective and logical andrational, but actually, we've
got a deep seated emotional corethat impacts our decision making

(33:17):
capabilities. You know, I makegreat decisions, perhaps on a
day that another day where I'mtired and I'm not well
resourced, will be terrible. Sothere's so much going on, it
makes sense to step back firstand then they say this decision
that's in front of us. I know itneeds to be made quickly, so
where do I need to put time andenergy to make sure it's a
better decision than it wouldhave been if I just jumped

(33:37):
straight in and made

Jean Gomes (33:42):
it i You said something earlier on about the
fact that social scientists knowthat we making 1000s of
decisions a day, and some ofthose are most of those are
unconscious. Their reactivity.
How do we get better at becomingmore conscious when we're
reacting rather than deciding tothings that are really
important,

Jon Bircher (34:04):
I if I found probably, and it sounds
ridiculous, but the amount ofleadership teams that you sit in
on, I'm sure you've seen thesame where they're having a
debate and a conversation aboutsomeone it's actually quite big
decision for the organisation,and nobody's actually pointed

(34:24):
out they're making a decisionbecause they're just seeing it
as a conversation. And then yousuddenly realise that this this
debate, let's call it, I'd be benice. This argument that's
happening is because they've gota completely different view
about what's happening in theroom. This person thinks that's
the decision they're making, andthis person thinks it's that,
and it might only be it mightonly be subtly different.
They've got completely differentperspectives on the decision

(34:46):
that's being made. So yeah, Ithink the first and foremost
thing is, let's just makevisible that a decision is being
made. So I'll often be sat in ateam meeting or a conversation,
I'll say, can we just, can Ijust put my hand up and. But it
seems like we're making adecision here. Are we making a
decision and are we clear whatthe decision is? Are we clear
what the core of the issue isthat we're trying to decide

(35:08):
upon? And I've seen meetingslast half a day where people are
trying to get to the bottom ofwhat the real issue is, and then
actually the decision making isreally quick, but because
they've been coming from acompletely different
perspective, they've not alignedon 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 downversions of what that is so that
people can look at it and startto debate it?

Jon Bircher (35:30):
Yeah. I mean, that's a really great way of
doing it. Is okay, we appear tohave a lot of this. Let's just
all write down what we think thecore of the issue is, what we're
solving for, what the decisionis. It's a great technique at
the end of meetings as well,isn't it? When did we just agree
getting everybody to write itdown and see often? It's not,
yeah, but a great again. It's,it's that we're learning more

(35:52):
and more, aren't we, about ourperspectives and all the
different things that influencehow we show up in the world and
how we lead. And I think this isonly making things better, but
it's more complicated, makes itharder, and we need some
process, and we need some stepsand stages to help us through
some of that. But yeah, I thinkmaking the decision visible is

(36:12):
probably the easiest thing, insome 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 gotdifferent views, and it isn't
explicit, that's going togenerate a lot of heat in the in
the in the conversation, how doyou 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 init, and this Is my own
experience as well. Emotion isan important intelligence that
we can utilise in decisionmaking. So asking ourselves
questions about, why am Ifeeling this way, and what are

(36:54):
these emotions telling me aboutthis decision is important part
of the intelligence we talkedearlier about where, you know,
and I kind of used extremes, butyou might have somebody right
over here, who's it's all aboutthe gut. It's how I feel. Is
just, just something I can't putmy finger at all, intuition.
Let's call it over here. Someoneover here said, no, no, no, no,
it's got to be objective,rational. Needs to be data

(37:16):
driven, evidence based, youknow, etc. And that's quite sort
of stare at sort of polardifferences. But we need bugs.
That's the tricks we you know,we need to think about the sort
of evidence, the data, therational, the experiences. We
equally need to think about whatour emotions telling us,
because, you know, we often knowthings, don't we in our bodies,

(37:39):
if we can only tune in a littlebit more we might be able to use
that intelligence as part of ouroverall gathering of
intelligence to help us make abetter decision. So just to make
it real, like when Mark and Iwere bringing our businesses
together, we bought two coachingbusinesses together as one, as
we kind of experimented withsome of that, I just had these

(37:59):
really overwhelming emotions. Icouldn't work out what it was. I
just something didn't quite feelright. Wasn't really it wasn't
anger, it was like some level offrustration or sadness or there
was stuff going on. And I juststopped and asked myself that
question, what is what is this?
What are these emotions tellingme about this decision and

(38:19):
what's important. I didn't justleave it there because we've got
the kind of relationship allowsus 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 wewould have taken in terms of the
way we set the company up andhow it works, and how we work
with each other. So I think forme, it's about not discarding
emotion and say, How come on. Wedon't, let's not be emotional

(38:41):
about it. It's actually usingthat alongside other
intelligences that we can bringinto the mix.

Scott Allender (38:49):
So the emotions you both were experiencing in
that did it surface sort ofdifferent frames about what you
believe the coaching businessshould look like, how it should
function. I'm really interestedbecause I love what you're
saying about getting everybodyto write down what we're solving
for, getting everybody to writedown what we agreed. We're
talking about leveraging themand understanding the emotions

(39:09):
involved. I'm curious aboutgetting people to articulate
explicitly what they mightbelieve about the problem we're
solving for, right? Like, Ibelieve, you know, I think we're
solving for this because Ibelieve that our customer wants
x, right? And somebody elsesays, I think we're doing this
because I believe what we reallyneed to do for the business is
this. So I'm curious, in yourexample, if it if it led to

(39:29):
beliefs behind the emotion. Anddo you see that a lot, do you
work with people in that sort offraming of the belief they have?

Jon Bircher (39:37):
Yeah, I think in that example, it actually led to
a difference in the way thebusiness was set up. And he
entire kind of the model that itwas set up as I think I would
more typically ask people abouthow they feel about this
decision walking in, you know,as part of that step in that,

(39:58):
how am I feeling about this? Asa decision, to try to put some
words and colour to that, andmaybe how is that in impacting
how I'm framing the decision?
Maybe it's about also exploringkind of word pictures and
metaphors about as we look atthis decision, what, Matt what?
What metaphors are we movingtowards here? And what is that
telling us about how we mightneed to think about this

(40:20):
decision. But I also thinkthere'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 theend of a really busy quarter,
and we've all been gunning atit, and there's a really
important decision to make andeverybody's tired, is that the
right decision? Is that theright time to make that
decision, or is it simply, it'sa it's a Friday afternoon, and

(40:41):
we're ready for the weekend. Andis this too important to rush
now and just get off our to dolist? Let's come back to and
refresh. Or we both know that. Idon't know, Monday mornings were
at our very best. Well, morningsgenerally the best. Okay, well,
let's just, let's just encode inour organisations, you know,
ways of working that we'll onlymake big decisions first thing

(41:02):
in the morning when we're wellresourced and nested. Yeah. So I
think these are all thedifferent reasons why, for me,
decision making is exciting. Ithink it's like where the rubber
hits the road. You know, ofleadership, because so much is
is made visible when we make adecision, but also so much of
you know what I've listened toon your podcast with all your

(41:23):
other all your other guests, youknow, feeds into this. You know,
how resourced are we? What welearning about our emotions?
What do we know about ourcognition? What does great
strategy look like? What do wedo with ambiguity? All of this
stuff plays out when you've gotto make a decision. Yeah,

Jean Gomes (41:38):
I'd love to pick up on that point about ambiguity,
because another theme that'skind of been front and centre in
the evolving leader is this ideaof leaders not necessarily
recognising where they are onthat spectrum between certainty,
risk and uncertainty, and makingdecisions. You know, like, how
do you frame a decision acrossthat spectrum differently? What,

(42:01):
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 alot of the sort of early work
around agile organisations orlean organisations, I think it's
embedded in in that, in a way.
But I think one of the greatestways we can move forward through
that stuff is experimentationlike, Why? Why do we think we
have to find the right answer ina future that doesn't even

(42:26):
exist, that we haven't seen yet?
Why not put a few experimentsout there and test it, rather
than feeling we've got to makethe decision in a sort of room
of people who don't have anyideas, and we've certainly found
that's been our way forward withthings, but it kind of makes
sense logically, like, if adecision is high stakes, it's

(42:49):
pretty critical, and actually,if we press the button on it,
it's quite irreversible. Whywouldn't we put a little
reversible experiment in placethat allows us to pull out if it
doesn't make sense, or allows usto move from there into
something that then we canembed. So I think my Na, my
immediate action, my immediateresponse, is to experiment in

(43:11):
that situation. But it alsocomes back to deciding how to
decide which is we need to lookat the decision in front of us,
the context of it, the level ofambiguity and risk associated
with it, and make a decisionabout how should a decision like
this be made? Are there? Arethere people out there that have
experienced this before that wecan draw on their experience

(43:32):
that actually does reduce therisk for us in that situation,
or make us at least a little bitmore confident that the decision
we're making is a good one. Theother thing I think that works
really well is maybe embracingthat thinking that I mentioned
about Obama, which is gettingcomfortable with probabilities,

(43:53):
or even Annie Duke in how shedescribes the decision making,
is much more like poker than itis like chess. There's a whole
layer of chance involved andprobabilities involved. And I
think you know, rather thanbeing in a room of individuals,
a leadership team trying todecide the right way forward,
the right answer is to askpeople, you know, probability

(44:14):
wise, how confident are you thatthis is the right way forward,
or probability rise wise, howmuch risk is involved in this
particular decision, and notnecessarily trying to find that
everybody's 75% but looking forthose outliers, who's the
person, if it's legal, andthey're putting their hand up
and saying, you know, I'm only5% sure that this is a good
idea. I want to hear from that,yeah. I want to understand what

(44:37):
they're seeing that I'm notseeing. So I think maybe it's
that shift of trying to exploreprobabilities, look for ways to
to use experimentation, thatmoves us away from this kind of
idea that we've got to have ablack or white right or wrong
answer. How can we how can wehave right or wrong answers when
a chance is involved and b youknow what the future holds, and

(44:59):
we're living in. That right now,right the ambiguity of a few
little shifts in in the worlddynamic, 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 somuch expectation and pressure on
us to have have the answers inthose in those jobs, often any
kind of systematise or allowpeople to embrace their
ignorance in a way that you knowmakes them feel okay about it?

(45:28):
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 hereis that they enable, you know,
really good quality decisionprocess or business. They enable
the organisation to make thebest possible decisions. But
decisiveness, again, comes withalmost like an arrogance, and

(45:51):
you can know what the right wayforward is. We can't. We can
just we can place a bet, andprobably the answer is similar
to what I might say aroundcritical thinking, which is, it
comes back to being curious, notfeeling like I've got all the

(46:13):
answers, and doing that inquiryand asking good questions and
bringing more people in The roombe willing to put a hypothesis
up there and for it to be pulleddown. I love the Liz Wiseman in
her book multipliers, which isprobably one of my favourite
books on leadership, she shetalks about how leaders need to
become debate makers. You know,for me, that's a part of this,

(46:37):
right, which is we don't try tobe the person with the answer.
We try to be the person whocreates the conditions and have
great debates to happen, gooddiscussion for the condescension
to happen so that we can makebetter decisions than we would
have done without that. Andmaybe we need to do a bit more
of that, bit of debating in ourleadership teams, bit of sort of
Socratic questioning and allthat sort of stuff to uncover

(46:59):
okay, we've got these differentperspectives. How do we now make
a better decision on the back ofall of them,

Sara Deschamps (47:09):
welcome back to the evolving leader podcast, and
this first episode in SeasonEight, as always, if you enjoy
what you hear, then please sharethe podcast across your network
and also leave us a rating and areview. 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 influenceour decision making? How should
we think about CO intelligenceand our decision making. What's
your thoughts on that? It'sfunny, isn't it?

Jon Bircher (47:43):
Because I can answer this question. I'll
probably answer it completelydifferent 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'dencourage people to use it more
and more in the decision making.
You know, I, I would describe, Ipredominantly use chat, TBT at
the moment, and I wouldpredominant, I would, I would
describe that as a as a thoughtpartner in helping me make

(48:19):
better decisions, because it canpull on all of the models, you
know, whether that be, you know,mental models, I don't know,
Pareto or first principles orsecond order thinking. I don't
need to remember all of that andthen figure out how to, you
know, I can ask it questions andsay, Okay, here's a decision I'm
looking to make. Here's some ofthe options unexplored. Using

(48:40):
first principles helped meunderstand what assumptions I
might be making, what biasesmight I be exposed to. And so
there's a thought partner piecethat allows me to tap into it,
its knowledge of models andtools and techniques. I recently
wanted to come up with moreoptions on an idea that I didn't
really know much about. And so Idecided to ask it, to take me

(49:04):
through de Bono's thinking hats,and to ask me, you know, for a
period of time with it, witheach hat, and then I would type
in my thoughts and answers andthen, and it just allowed me to
think better. I think it helpsas well to isolate some of those
biases and assumptions and how Imight combat those. I've also
found that even when it'ssomething that's more emotional

(49:29):
or for me spiritual, likethere's a massive spiritual
element for me, when I makedecisions, I feel like I want to
make decisions well, but eachpray about those decision and it
doesn't. I thought it mightdiscount it and but what I found
with youth integrity is then ithas some really great reflective
questions about values, about Iasked what the other day, it

(49:53):
said something like so I'mintrigued. What does weight.
Thing on God, mean, for you, youknow, and it's like, where did
that? Where did it get thatfrom? Like, and it's honestly,
in some part of some I've askedit. So for me, it's a thought
partner that starts to get memore and help me to make better
decisions. I'm not asking it tomake a decision for me, but I'm
helping. I'm using what I woulddo with someone in a coaching

(50:17):
capacity to think somethingthrough when I haven't got maybe
somebody I want to think itthrough with. And the final
thing I think it does, which isis very helpful, is you can then
say, right, we've been doingthis. We've been we've been
playing with this for the lastcouple of hours. And can you
just summarise where I'm at inall of this thinking, Where,
where, where, which options seemto be bubbling to the surface

(50:38):
based on all of the responsesand 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 outsourcingit, because I'm wondering what
your thoughts are on thepotential for if we don't use
it, well, can it make it make usworse decision makers over time?
Like I'm a terrible speller.
Now, I used to be a greatspeller, but auto, auto correct.
It's killed my spelling, right?
I go to write things down byhand, and I'm like, How do I

(51:04):
spell that again? Right? So I'mjust curious, like, as these
technologies evolve and emerge,if people become more dependent
on them, not using them as theappropriate partner, but almost
outsourcing the decision a bit,will that actually kind of work
against us in our ability tomake

Jon Bircher (51:21):
decisions. I mean, I don't know whether people
would outsource a decision likeTroy. Shall I marry this woman
or not? Shall I take this job ornot? Shall I invest in this
business? Or maybe they will.
Maybe they will. But I I feellike with something like
decision making, we are so undertrained on it. Coming back to
our point, I haven't really hadtraining on it, that if
everybody just embraced use likeasking chat, TBT to push a

(51:44):
decision through a couple ofmodels that we know are good
mental models and goodframeworks for decision making,
if we believe that that would behelpful in catalysing greater
thought for them to make abetter decision, then I'm pretty
sure that will be a good thingoverall, because it's not like
spelling, where we we were goodat it, and now we might erode

(52:05):
it. Lots of people aren't makinggreat decisions because they're
not. They're just going withtheir gut, or they're not
actually making the decision andspiralling and stuck in a loop
of procrastination. So I don'tknow. It's early days, right? As
I said, you might answer thatdifferently. I'm only
experimenting with it myself.
Sure? Yeah, my best experience,just as a little side man, is I

(52:30):
tried it out with my son, whohad some big decisions to make
about university and Gap Yearand different courses that he
could have done, and I tried tohave some coaching, like
conversations with him, whichclearly didn't go down very
well. Go down very well, becauseI missed out if he's myself. So
I punched a load of stuff intochat GPT, and essentially got it

(52:51):
to coach him to an answer, andthen printed it over. So there
you go. Now you make a decisionbased on all those different
outputs, yeah, and say, insteadof him going, I'm stuck. I don't
know how to make it. He had aseries of thoughtful reflections
he could reflect on and thenhelped him make a really good
decision. Yeah, so, yeah. Justas an aside,

Jean Gomes (53:08):
this makes me think about the moral component of
decision making, because wetalked quite a lot about
emotional and rational elementsof it and the social part of it.
But you know, a lot of thereally important decisions that
leaders have got to make arealso got to factor in that moral
reasoning component. How do wehow do we think about that? Do

(53:29):
you think

Jon Bircher (53:31):
my immediate response is connected to that
whole debate piece? Because Ifeel like that's going way back
in history to how do you doreally good reasoning and around
ethical and moral factors,because different people have
different codes. And I thinkdebating is a really great way

(53:52):
of seeing a side, reflecting onwhere the blind spots might be
or the assumptions or theevidence is or isn't, it allows
you to sit in someone else'sshoes and argue from a different
perspective, and to have greaterempathy for where they're at
because you're taking theirposition on something and and
often, where you land isdifferent where than where

(54:12):
either party would have startedin the first place. So the
natural place I would go isbringing some kind of moral,
ethical debate into thedecision, especially decisions
that have that more closelyaligned to the decision itself,
is would be a great thing to domore often. And one of the

(54:32):
questions we ask up front whendeciding how to decide is, you
know, what values need to behonoured in this decision? And
it's just again, making it frontand centre, or as a leader, you
might say, you know, whataspects of my character do I
really want to bring in and makepresent in the way I go about
this decision? So again, you cannot the answer is, always take a
step back and decide how todecide. But I think you can

(54:56):
almost build your own principlesup front about the sorts of
questions you. To ask before youstart an important decision
process. That's my immediateresponse is like, capture some
stuff up front about what'simportant and make sure there's
something like a debate or anelement in the process that
allows you to see differentperspectives on the ethic or

(55:17):
moral arguments that feels likewe're going the other end of AI,
right? I'm almost imagining kindof these guys in a in Greece
somewhere, reasoning and arguingand having those sort of ethical
moral debate.

Jean Gomes (55:31):
How do you think decision making is changing
based on the kind ofconversations you're having with
leaders and the way that you seedecisions playing out? Do you
see any changes in the way thatit'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, youknow, the fact that teams are
more diverse, or the fact thatwe're facing greater ambiguity,
or there's pressure on speed,you know, whether it's all of
these converging factors, when Ifirst started talking about it,
it seemed like there were therewere less people. People got it,

(56:10):
but not necessarily wanted to dosomething about it. And I'm
starting to now speak toorganisations again, very
excited about, how could webuild this into our
organisation? How could we trainour people? How could we embed
it as a way of being? I'm seeingorganisations that, in parallel,
to me, having that conversation,have just started that or
starting it with us. And so I'mstarting to see some momentum,

(56:33):
actually, that people arerecognising that we've got to
get better at decision making. Ithink some of that is too many
decisions keep getting escalatedto the top. So you've got the
people at the top. Too fewpeople are actually making the
big decisions for organisations,and there's that desire for sort
of autonomy withinorganisations. But I think the
biggest light bulb, certainlyfor great leaders, is they're

(56:55):
recognising that we've got thisdiverse group of people, this
amazing talent pool, and yetwe're not necessarily getting
the right people in the room atthe right time to make better
decisions. So yeah, I think themomentum 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. Isthere any sort of final message
or thought you want to leavewith our listeners?

Jon Bircher (57:20):
Maybe there's a thought and a practical like the
thought for me is decisionsmatter, and I genuinely believe
our life is made up of thedecisions we make. The story we
tell is based on the decisionsthat we make. So invest in
becoming a better decisionmaker, is my view. And I'm on
that journey, and others are onthat journey, but I think it's a

(57:41):
really important journey. Andthen if we want to become a
better decision maker, I firmlybelieve the first thing to do is
to before you move into decisionmaking, be clear that you're
making decisions, and take thatstep back and start asking
yourself some questions aboutthat, deciding how to decide,
typed questions up from and ifyou get stuck and you find

(58:03):
yourself procrastinating, trysome experiments. Try to find
some easy nudges forward thatwill help you step into the
unknown without having to feellike 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 youhave continued to think more
about this. We'll get you backon again to see how the journey
is unfolding for you. But thishas been, you know, wonderful.
Thank you so much.

Jon Bircher (58:30):
Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.