Overcoming the Challenge of Complex Decisions

In this section, we discuss two approaches to make effective decisions despite the complexities associated with today’s marketing problems. Our experience suggests that these recommendations can have two major positive effects. First, they foster an organizational learning environment that is fact based rather than intuition driven. Second, they help assimilate information across local silos and help everyone recognize the presence of other “moving parts” that affect the organization’s ability to achieve its desired goals. Together, these two solutions—a “systems approach” and “procedural rationality”—build an organizational culture that recognizes the fluid nature of organizational goals, gives adequate consideration to possible alternatives, allows for indirect and nonlinear causal relationships, and minimizes the discounting of external factors in the decision-making process.