Whenever a decision matters, the method matters. And the conventional methods of decisionmaking were (and are) substantially challenged by the publication of The Choosing By Advantages Decisionmaking System. This book systematically points out the illogic of our most honored approaches to decisionmaking and offers answers to the questions posed in the introduction above. CBA is not an individual method for making decisions, it is not a tool, and it is not a collection of methods. It is a decisionmaking system. It may also be described as reality based decisionmaking. The CBA system includes a wide variety of decisionmaking tools, techniques, and methods — sharing just one set of definitions, principles, and models. Because CBA is a system (not a collection of methods) and because the CBA methods are sound methods, CBA greatly simplifies sound decisionmaking.

The following brief review of some of the salient points of CBA will permit a better understanding of CBA.

• More than a century ago, and many times since then, researchers have demonstrated that sound methods of decisionmaking base decisions on the differences among the alternatives. CBA recognizes and takes into account the following principle: Any difference between two alternatives can be viewed as an advantage of the one alternative or as a disadvantage of the other alternative. Therefore, if we list a difference as an advantage of the one alternative and list it again as a disadvantage of the other alternative, we are double counting that difference. To simplify and clarify the decisionmaking process, CBA lists each difference just once — as an advantage.

• Decision methods just weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative do not just cause double counting. They also cause omissions, distortions, confusion, and faulty decisions.

• It is unnecessary and impossible to assign valid numerical weights, ratings, or scores to factors or attributes. (An attribute is a characteristic, quality, or consequence of one alternative.)

• Nine Basic Sound Decisionmaking Principles

• Four Cornerstone Principles

 

• Pivotal Cornerstone Principle: Decisionmakers must learn and skillfully use sound methods. (Sound decisionmaking is not a natural skill.)

 

• Fundamental Rule of Sound Decisionmaking: Decisions must be based on the importance of advantages (and not on the importance of dollars).

 

• Principle of Anchoring: Decisions must be anchored to the relevant facts (i.e., specifying as opposed to generalizing). Learning the Principle of Anchoring requires a paradigm shift.

 

• Methods Principle: Different types of decisions call for different sound methods.

 

• Simplifying Sound Decisionmaking

 

• Simplify complex decisions by taking smaller steps.

• Simplify simple decisions by taking fewer steps.

• Simplify all decisions by correctly using correct data.

• Money decisions call for special methods.

• Different money-decisionmaking contexts call for different money-decisionmaking methods.

 

• The CBA System Comprises:

• Sound Decisionmaking – making decisions that are anchored to the relevant facts,

• Congruent Decisionmaking – making sound decisions that have unity, harmony, and integrity — in addition to accomplishing, on schedule, the highest-priority activities, projects, and programs of an individual or an organization, and

• Effective Decisionmaking — making sound, congruent decisions that are willingly or grudgingly, accepted and implemented.

• The Decisionmaking Process

• The Stage Setting Phase

• The Innovation Phase

• The Decisionmaking Phase

• The Reconsideration Phase

• The Implementation Phase

• Methods Determine Decisions Determine Actions Determine Outcomes

• Essential Definitions:

• Factor: An element, part, or component of a decision; a container of data; each factor contains criteria, attributes, advantages, and other types of data.

• Criterion: A requirement (a decision-rule) or a guideline – a must or a want; any standard on which a judgment is based; any decision that guides further decisionmaking.

• Attribute: A characteristic, quality, or consequence of one alternative.

• Advantage: A beneficial difference between the attributes of two alternatives.

• To make a sound decision, the importance of each advantage must be judged with care and precision.

• In a preference curve, a non-advantage is represented by a zero. In actuality, however, an advantage of zero is not an advantage at all. It has no importance – not a zero importance. Therefore, in a display of advantages, a non-advantage and its non-importance are represented by blank spaces (except in a preference curve).

• All advantages of all alternatives must be weighed on the same scale of importance. Deciding the importance of each advantage should be based on the following.

• Decisionmaking is not a branch of mathematics. Therefore, one must decide, not calculate, the importance of each advantage – based upon the following considerations:

• The purpose and circumstances of the decision.

• The needs and preferences of stakeholders, including those who will simply be interested in the decision – in addition to customers, future generations, and others who will be affected by the decision.

• The magnitudes of the advantages (usually, an advantage of almost zero will have an importance of almost zero).

• The magnitudes of the associated attributes (usually, the relationships between advantages and importance of advantages are nonlinear, i.e., preference curves are usually not straight lines).

 

• There is no such thing as facts-only decisionmaking. All decisions and all methods of decisionmaking are, at least in part, subjective. All decisions are value laden.

• Benefit/Cost ratios should not be used to choose from mutually-exclusive alternatives with unequal costs. Importance/Cost ratios must sometimes be used for setting priorities among non-exclusive proposals with unequal costs.

• Increment: An increase in cost coupled with an increase, decrease, or no change in total importance of advantages.

• Since “a dollar” is not “a dollar”, because money-decisions are interdependent decisions, and because money-differences are messages, not advantages – a money-scale is not a valid importance-scale. In sound methods, the vertical scale pertains to importance of advantages.

• In the Decisionmaking and Reconsideration Phases of the CBA Process, it is necessary to form clear, accurate, sensory-rich, motivational perceptions of the advantages of the selected alternative.

Learning sound decisionmaking is not necessarily easy. There is also every incentive to continue using the familiar old methods in use by the vast majority of other practitioners. The CBA skill learning process will require:

• learning just one small, logical set of CBA definitions, principles, models, and methods at a  time,

• unlearning the unsound methods CBA will replace,

• relearning the CBA concepts and methods,

• practicing the CBA concepts and methods, and

• teaching the CBA concepts and methods to others.

Developed over approximately the last thirty years under the sponsorship of the USDA Forest Service and in cooperation with Utah State University, CBA is actively used by other agencies including the DOI National Park Service and the DOT Federal Highway Administration. The purpose for the research leading to CBA was to find a sound decisionmaking approach – one that could accommodate quantitative and qualitative data, could facilitate focusing on interests and not positions, and could stand up to stakeholder and legal scrutiny. Value Analysis (VA) studies for the agencies mentioned above, for example, no longer use conventional decisionmaking methods; instead, they use the sound methods of CBA. USDA and DOI are formulating processes for incorporating CBA into the VA job plan.