Decision Assessment Score

Decision Assessment Score

Methodology matters. As a graduate of political sciences, I’ve been indoctrinated in the importance of method alongside essence. Back when I was younger and more idealistic, I argued against the relative weight of the method in favor of the essence. No matter what the method would matter I said but that pales if the essence is missed. Somewhere along my university education, I took Methodology from Ilter Turan who was also heading our department at Koç University. I admit it does not sound inspirational but it was an epiphany moment for me.

Come on, methodology does not cut it I hear almost hear you say. It should have been Political Theory to make you jump you might be thinking if you’re paying attention. The reason why it cut it was like going back to high school days in a chemistry lab with liquids and instructions. There’s a reason why such instructions are to be followed starting from safety issues to actually getting the experiment done in a comparable manner to your schoolmates. Similar to the physical lab, politics have ways of doing things that are related to the thing that is being done but nonetheless have a logic in how it is being done as well.

Take for example the rules for parliamentary procedure. It makes a huge difference how something gets taken up – does it go through sub committees or comes directly to the final voting body? How many votes are necessary to suggest an amendment? How many votes are necessary to make the motion pass? Is there an appeal mechanism? How does it get implemented? Politics is altogether different with various method choices for such procedures. A system can be highly centralized and authoritarian or relatively decentralized and inclusive without changing the essence but altering the method of implementation.

The final impact of all decisions are effected both by the quality of the decision as well as the implementation factors. Further making an impact is the timing aspect. After all, the decision to shoot for the goal with the best striker on the team makes sense if the match is still on. After the fact timing would kill the best implemented highest quality decision.

Wondering if a Decision Assessment Score (“DAS”) could be devised, I sat down to devise a very simple formula so that it can be used easily for a decision maker before finalizing the decision making process. I identified Decision, Implementation and Timing as the simplest key factors in calculating the DAS. Incidentally I realized that when simplifying the process; one could focus on critical factors for their own needs.

To illustrate the point, consider a situation in which the decision seems very clear to you and the timing is already late. With these two factors out, it is the implementation quality that will have the biggest impact on the DAS as others are already set. While the analysis might seem self-evident, this approach is specifically intended to make it evident. By dividing up the process in to Decision, Implementation and Timing; the process helps to point out to whatever is self-evident thus to save time and focus on those other factors that can be effected by the decision maker. I would expect that it most situations, the decision maker will have a lot more clarity with the implementation metrics than with the quality of the decision and timing being on either side as per the question at hand.

Before I lay out the formula, I will start by declaring my ultimate suspicion that any life simplifying formula is inherently problematic. As such, this should be taken with a big grain of salt and its relevance should be scrutinized. Beyond this caveat emptor, I think its usefulness will lie in providing a comparable framework to assess the viability of different options or in analyzing decisions made by actors that can be compared.

In the formula design, Decision component has 4 sub-factors:

·         Alternatives Assessed rates the decision making process in being thorough with alternatives the question at hand.

·         Relevance to Question looks at how relevant the answer is to the question. So for example suggesting to drive to location without a proper road will have a low relevance.

·         Resources Considered focuses on the analysis of relationship of the decision with the resources to implement it.

·         Other Factors is a plug-in to add alternatives.

Implementation component has 3 sub-factors that are:

·         Effective that looks at the effective implementation of the decision. Consider that if this an ex-ante situation, this factor as well as the Efficient factor is an estimation. However, if you are using the method as an ex-post analysis, then these factors will reflect the actual outcome of the implementation of the specific decision.

·         Efficient that looks at resource usage.

·         Other is a plug-in to add alternatives.

DAS 1

While I’ve used this design, I encourage you to change the input components as well as the sub-weights for your own needs and experiment with them to suit your question at hand.

So Decision and Implementation sub-factors get graded on a scale of 1 to 10 which are each multiplied by their respective weights. Summation of the sub-factors yield Decision and Implementation scores. The final calculation is made by multiplying Decision, Implementation and Timing scores to arrive at the DAS.

I tested the scoring with a current issue by comparing Germany’s preparedness to coronavirus to Trump’s January position on the virus. While being overly simplistic, I wanted to compare the decision to prepare for a potential epidemic from years ago to downplaying the risk.

No wonder Trump Ignores comes out to be a poor decision. In retrospect we have this answer. What is more interesting is that Trump’s Implementation and Timing is not that bad. Hear me out on this – Implementation looks at the implementation quality with regards to the Decision component. So Trump Ignores looks at how good was the implementation of the ignorance. The 8 score on effectiveness could have been 10 if across the US, all decision makers joined in. The 2 point cut on this score is due to the fact that some experts and elected officials came out against him. As for the Timing, Germany Prepares looks at the timing quality of a preparation decision which was made perfectly i.e. Germany was able to prepare on time before the incident. As for Trump Ignores, Timing deals effectively with a short period of time before Trump got more serious about the matter. For this decision, Timing considers how Trump responded to the ongoing crises in the making. So even if the playing down decision could be poor, the timing of that decision was not behind the curve. It was simply that the decision was quite wrong.

DAS 1 effectively gives equal weight to Decision, Implementation and Timing. Consequently failure in one of these aspects will hurt the final score so much that improvements in others will not be able to make up.

Once I reviewed DAS 1, I wondered if there could be an alternative (totally in line with the spirit of this article).

DAS 2

In this alternative version, DAS is calculated in a different way:

·         Decision and Implementation scores are calculated as in DAS 1 with each sub-factor getting assessed.

·         However than each category is multiplied by its weight (note that Category Weights should add up to 1).

·         Then Decision and Implementation scores are summed up and then multiplied with Timing.

Note that DAS 2 still gives higher markers to Germany’s decision to prepare upfront but the Trump approach fares comparatively better than DAS 1 formula.

The reason is twofold – one is the equal weighting of Decision with Implementation and the other and more important factor is giving emphasis on Timing. Note that DAS 1 had 3 components in multiplication where DAS 2 has Timing multiplied with the combined Decision & Implementation score.

I actually think both approaches are valid depending on the needs of the user. For example. The latter one is more useful if Timing is more relevant to the analysis.

As indicated before, feel free to change headings and weightings to suit your needs.

In concluding, I will point out the combined inspiration for this analysis. On a practical level, I was involved in making an important recruitment choice with a group of esteemed colleagues. Through that process, I tried to quantify the effect that a new team member would have on the management quality for what can be done to improve this effect. On a more philosophical level, my attention was drawn to behavioral economics and decision making by a comment by Mustafa Şeref Akın who is always very wise and inquisitive in such matters. His comment made me think (contentiously with a hypothesis I would not be able to prove) that there is a profound difference in how Turks think differently than the Americans regarding decision making. I surmised that Americans with decentralized institutions and individualistic history are inclined to think decision making important enough to devote theories to it. On the other hand, Turks coming from a more centrist authoritarian background tend less to focus on the mechanics of decision making and more on the decision itself and the impact of the decision.

Istanbul, April 2020