Discussion Questions for Chapter 1

1. What is Chapter 1’s main point?

Chapter 1 primarily talk about the art of Decision Making. Different types of audience employ different types of decision criteria in different scenarios. It also touches base with the similarities & differences of the decision making criterias among the different types of audience members.
Another very interesting factor that this chapter brings up is the Audience expectations. In the words of author – “Expert audiences expect professionals to address their decision criteria.” He illustrates & make his point using the smartphone MBA case.
The first chapter also introduces the concept of Decision matrixes. That’s one tool using which audiences decide what information they want from professionals and the information that will fill their decision schemata.

2. Fill in a decision matrix that describes one of the schemas you use to make decisions on your job.

I use the following decision matrix to make decisions on my job.

Decision Criteria | Benchmark | 1. Meets the requirements | Proposed solution should meet the stated business needs within the stated boundaries. | 2. Operational feasibility | Proposed solution should fit in well in the organization. It is also a measure of how people feel about the system/project. | 3. Technical feasibility | Proposed solution should be practically considering a specific technical solution and the availability of technical resources and expertise. | 4. Schedule feasibility | Proposed solution should be reasonably achievable with the project timetable is. | 5. Economic feasibility | Proposed solution should be cost-effective. | 6. Return on investment (ROI) | Benefits from proposed solution should be equal to net cash receipts of the project divided by the cash outlays of the project. |

3. What benchmarks are mentioned in the “Revised Executive Summary of a Business Plan” on pages 14-16? Would the revision have benefited from the addition of more benchmark information? Please explain.

Yes, the revision would have benefitted from the addition of more benchmark information. I completely agree with author’s rationale that benchmarking could be excellently used to present comparative information to the audience which can be later used to convince them of the relative benefits of the recommended alternative. Expert audiences supply comparative information about alternatives when it is missing from a document or presentation. When consumers retrieve comparative information from their memories, the information they retrieve has a stronger effect on their decisions and hence can negatively tilt the scales. When the missing information is not retrievable, audiences may infer it which again is something the presenter cannot control. Providing the audience with the benchmarking information first hand eliminates the possibility of them seeking it from external sources or relying on their memory to make a decision. Benchmarking gives enormous power to the presenter by letting him guide the thought process of his audience.

4. Although experts usually make decisions on the basis of decision matrices, novices usually make decisions on the basis of lists of pros and cons. At your job, what decisions do you make like an expert? What decisions do you make like a novice?

As mentioned in the book, the most fundamental difference between expert and novice audiences is that, in contrast to experts, novice audiences come to documents, presentations, and group meetings without well-developed or appropriate schemata in mind. Novice audience members lack the well-formed and matrix-like decision schemata they need to make a good decision.
I follow a slightly different variation of this in my job. I act as a novice in situations or meetings to which I am called for providing external perspective only. Consider the following situation, the technical team is well-versed with the product but needs somebody to objectively & externally critique their work. I believe in situations such as these it is better to go with a fresh perspective, a blank slate just like the target customer and hence, the novice approach works better here.
On the other hand, I act as an expert with crystal clear decision parameters when I am making decisions on the tasks that I am assigned to & are responsible for. This again stems from my belief that it is necessary to act as an expert when the end-delivery is getting impacted by your decisions.

5. Think of an instance at your job when someone tried to persuade you to make an important decision. How well did they address your decision criteria and how did you respond?

In the past five years, as an IT Engineer, I have extensively worked with multi-disciplinary teams ranging from technical, business, marketing, legal, sales to users. As part of my job responsibilities, I was to coordinate & collaborate with all of them & come up with a solution acceptable to all. The final call on the solution & the scope of the project used to be taken after getting the consent of all the stakeholders via meetings, presentations, group conferences, etc. As expected, conflicts of interest were common & it is then that an individual’s persuasion skills used to come handy.
I remember that a similar situation arose when I was defining the scope of a project with a business user. We were in the final stages of finalizing the scope when the business user realized that he has not conveyed to me one critical business requirement. The IT team was in the final stages of estimation & adding that business requirement to the scope of the project would have had a cascading effect on our estimations. Obviously, there was a lot of resistance from the IT Team & me being the IT Lead was categorically against adding that requirement to the scope of the project. It is then that the business lead scheduled a meeting with me where in he conveyed to me the criticality of that business requirement & the benefits of adding it to the scope of the project now than doing it later. He successfully addressed my decision criteria viz. Operational feasibility, Technical feasibility, Schedule feasibility, Economic feasibility & Return on investment (ROI) of adding that requirement to the scope of the project. Once satisfied with his rationale, I agreed to add the new business requirement to the scope of the project. I think it was very smart of the business user to schedule a one-on-one meeting with me to address my concerns & decision criteria as well as obtain my buy-in for adding the new requirement to the scope of the project.