Decision analysis for practitioners

Many practitioners consider decision analysis as a sociotechnical discipline, with probability, utility, and trade-offs as the core components of a model that enables an accountable decision maker experiencing a sense of unease about the present to explore different assumptions about the future and develop a plan about the way forward for the organization. The decision analyst acts as a process consultant, working with the decision maker and key players as a problem solver and applying any of five structural and five content ingredients of decision analysis in building a requisite model that is sufficient in form and content to resolve the problem while acting as a transitional object, which holds and contains the decision maker’s unease and anxiety about the future. Ten social skills that enable the decision analyst to serve as a process consultant are explained. Six case studies representing problem types for evaluating options, allocating resources, bargaining and negotiating, choosing and deciding, managing risk, and revising opinion demonstrate the many ways that their acting as a transitional object enables exploring the future.