Direction finding, drawing the line somewhere.

Direction finding, drawing the line somewhere. 

Time to read: 5 minutes.

Master your navigation skills by developing reliance on your decisions rather than your devices. Like all our decision making skills, finding our way requires practice.

Decisions and their outcomes are not created equal, some can be fragile creations requiring a constant guiding and encouraging touch, others brutally binary in “what’s done is done” and we simply await the hammer of success or failure. The reality of course is that decision making events rarely present themselves without a disguise, and frequently come bearing the promise of gifts.

Decision making events appear to have at least two solid points of reference; where we are and where we want to end up. So, we can just fire up our decision making GPS and map our way to the announcement of “your destination is on your right”. We know this is an over-simplification, and we also know that if we navigate this way and by chance locate our desired destination in “decision making land”, it has much more to do with luck than our judgement. Why then do we persist in frequently following the same routes hoping for a better quality of destination?

Ease, that’s why. Another over-simplification perhaps? The truth is we’re all more than a little seduced by ease, we’re biased to choose ease over price and quality, all other things being equal. Even in crucial decision making, we are simple consumers who tend to follow the economics of basic behavioural rules – value and utility amongst other influencing factors, and many of these are often cultural and ecological.

How many of us choose information over instruction? In other words, read a map when we have a GPS available, we must deliberate and choose our route from a map and the information we can glean from it, or we could effortlessly follow the bread-crumb instructions doled out to us “just in time”.

Imagine you’re plotting a route you’ve never travelled previously; you have no prior information regarding the particulars of this journey, just the generalisations from previous travel. Do you painstakingly plan and plot your way to your destination, or do you relieve yourself of the effort by outsourcing your thinking? Deliberation and decisions from information; or a go-to destination from instruction? Unsurprisingly our reflex is to choose instruction almost every time, for the sake of ease.

Destinations, or put another way the outcomes we desire, reasonably demand more from us than ease; we have to work for them in part at least because we’re unable to recognise them without it. Decision making is a fundamental direction finding skill, without decisions our journey cannot start, even choosing not to choose, to just drift with time and tide, is something we choose to do – it’s true.

The first step, a decision to act towards obtaining your chosen outcome is the most important of the journey. You’ve made a choice to reject all other potential outcomes and alternative routes to them, though some decisions will allow you back-track with relative ease, others will ask too high a price for even a single step backwards.

Perhaps a little surprisingly most of us frequently take our commitment to the first step far too lightly in our impatience and eagerness to create movement. We can visualise good decision making and direction finding by thinking of ourselves rowing a small boat, we’re facing backwards towards a familiar point we’ve just left, and are moving towards an unseen and unknowable speculation, our outcome is to our backs and over the horizon.

It would seem reasonable then to pay more attention to what has brought us to our fixed point of departure, we’re setting out from what we believe we know rather than venturing into the unknown. Perhaps we ought to deliberate at least long enough to familiarise ourselves with the tides, currents, and the basic skills and tools for navigation.

Our Axios³ journey starts with a little humility in the face of our reality, caught as we are in-between the ends and means of our decisions, the outcomes we choose and how best to get there. The Direction Finding of our title is a skill that requires practice and a destination, in an outcome that we choose; and having chosen we must find the means to get there.

Axios³ is a decision making programme that generates insight and understanding by applying the cognitive tools and skills we all possess, informing and guiding your actions in securing improved outcomes in your life and business.

If you’re interested in any of the themes or concepts introduced in this article, sign up for Generating Insight our newsletter dedicated to decision making. Alternatively, why not participate in the discussion by attending one of the Axios³ workshops.

David Noble is the creator of Axios³, a unique programme dedicated to improving decision making. He is also the author of two books scheduled to be published later this year and next: Worthy of Question – Towards a New Economy of Wisdom; and Our Tribal Selves.