A Decision-Making Model to Remember
I once had dinner in business school with my good friend Lindsey and her mother, who was visiting. During the dinner, Mrs. Maynard interrogated me about my single status. (Lindsey was already engaged, so her mom’s interest in my dating life was a form of community service.)
After my explanations for being single failed to satisfy, Mrs. Maynard gave these instructions (paraphrasing): Here’s what I want you to do. Make a list of ten traits you want in a mate. Scrutinize the list, be specific about what you need on each dimension, and put them in order of importance. Then, eliminate the bottom five items.
That was Mrs. Maynard’s first lesson—that you can only make choices based on the most important criteria. You just need to tolerate anything you don’t like in other dimensions.
The second lesson was in the final step of the exercise. After setting the five benchmarks, you have to ask, Why would someone who fits these criteria be interested in me? Having unrealistic expectations doesn’t help you make good decisions!
After stumbling through the interrogation, Lindsey’s mother asked me to think about it more and email my final list. I thought she was joking about that assignment until I saw Mrs. Maynard a few months later at graduation and she said, “You never sent me your homework!”
That framework remains one of the most insightful I’ve encountered, and it has proven useful in many different situations.
Recently, I spoke with a client who was struggling with difficult decisions in both her personal and professional lives. The complexity and potential consequences of her decisions made them hard to face. I shared the framework with her. By clarifying the criteria for each decision, she could begin to cut through the complexity and make things feel more manageable. The decisions would still be hard, but she would have a grounded place to start.
I also recently observed a team working to define new values and norms. When setting values and norms, it is easy to land on concepts like teamwork, trust, and respect, which are so broad that no one could object to them. But the values come alive when you apply Mrs. Maynard’s guidance to define each benchmark.
In a dating context, it is converting “has similar interests” to something more specific, like “willing to join me on two international trips per year.” In the team values context, it’s refining “teamwork” to be closer to “everyone bends their work to teamwide goals.”
In another example, I recently worked with a nonprofit leader on setting hiring criteria for a critical position. When crafting a job description, it is easy to write the requirements in a way that only Albert Einstein or Usain Bolt could fit them. Applying the final step in the decision-making framework—“Why would someone who fits these criteria be interested in me?”—brings much-needed realism to that process.
A framework for all seasons!