On decision-making, the method, and what organisations get wrong when they try to manage "risk" instead of deciding.
Decision coaching helps you test your own reasoning, not buy another report. See how it works, then use it on a live decision.
Decision fatigue at work is not about willpower. It is the gap between the Decider and the decision, created by governance apparatus. See what replaces it.
Analysis paralysis in business is manufactured by governance machinery that was never designed to produce a decision. Grant Purdy explains what breaks the cycle.
Analysis paralysis is not overcome by setting deadlines or limiting options. It ends when you surface assumptions and test for sufficient certainty.
The standard tips target the wrong problem. How to overcome decision fatigue with five steps that replace the governance apparatus and produce decisions.
NASA, NHS Mid Staffs, Carillion, Wells Fargo: four decision fatigue examples that defeated full governance. See what surfaces assumptions instead.
Decision fatigue is real as an experience. The mechanism behind it is not. Three replications killed ego depletion. Here is what exhausts decision-makers.
Analysis paralysis is not a personality flaw. It is a process without a stopping condition. Here is what it really means and what replaces it.
Executive decision fatigue comes from governance apparatus, not too many decisions. Replace the committees and registers with five steps to the actual decision.
You never have all the facts. The question is not what you know but what you are assuming. Here is how decision-making under uncertainty actually works.
A structured post-decision review that reconstructs what was assumed, compares it to what actually happened, and asks: could the Decider have known then?
Enron had one. Boeing had one. The Australian banks had dozens. The risk management apparatus was fully assembled and fully useless when it mattered most.
The $80,000 consultant report was designed to demonstrate due diligence, not to help you decide. Here is what actually works for difficult business decisions.
A tribute to Roger Estall, co-author of Deciding, who through his advocacy for fire safety saved more lives in New Zealand than anyone else. 21 June 2023.
On the Universal Decision-Making Method and why deliberate, skilled application of it distinguishes successful decision-makers from unsuccessful ones.
A three-part conversation on risk management, the Universal Decision-Making Method, and nearly five decades of practical advisory work with Mark Siwik.
Grant Purdy critiques the IIA's Three Lines of Defence Model. The 2020 refresh fixed none of the fundamental flaws in how organisations actually make decisions.
Why enterprise risk management frameworks did not and could not help organisations decide what to do about COVID-19. The pandemic proved the apparatus useless.
Should internal audit perform risk assessments? Roger Estall argues the real question is whether the organisation makes good decisions, and how it would know.
How an informal label for diverse, conflicting concepts acquired the appearance of something of substance, and why it still weighs organisations down.
A Decider is anyone whose choices shape whether an organisation achieves its purpose. Not just executives. From the boardroom to the front line, if you influence an outcome, you are deciding.
Every organisation possesses an underlying reason for existence. Every decision must connect to and validate against it, or risk drifting into failure.
Monitoring means checking that what was assumed when the decision was made is what is actually occurring. A decision without a monitoring plan will drift.
Skilled decision-makers reduce organisational vulnerability, recognise opportunities emerging from disruption, and build monitoring into every decision.