Transcript Communication in decision making

Heriot-Watt University
Phil McNaull
Director of Finance
Communication in decision
making
 What decisions are we
talking about ?
 All decisions
 What type of
Communication?
 From people to
people….
 Objectives for today:
 Generate awareness
 Make you think
 Take responsibility
1. How often do I have to
tell you??
…….Once,
properly !
Anthony Hilton, CA Magazine
What is the communication
objective?
Dilbert by Scott Adams
Two Views of the
communication….
View 1
“Here the trick is that because the lay-out is so confusing you know
you won't be able to go back and get it later, so you pop it in your
trolley as you go past.” Professor Alan Penn, director of the Virtual Reality Centre
for the Built Environment at University College London
View 2
Ikea denied that its store layouts were designed intentionally to
bewilder customers.
'Our furniture showrooms are designed to give our customers lots
of ideas for every area of the home including your kitchen,
bedroom and living room,'
Carole Reddish, Ikea's deputy managing director for the UK and Ireland.
Communication Process
Background
Foreground
7%
Words
Tone
Non verbal
38%
55%
Communication Process
Zone of potential
misunderstanding
Sender
Encode
Receiver
Communication
Channel
Information
Decode
Understanding
Overcome
Barriers
Minimise
Risk
Communication Process
Sender
Receiver
Transmit
Foreground
Background
Encode
Mouth
Vocabulary
Opinions
Values
Beliefs
Thought
Ear
Vocabulary
Transitory
Deep Held
Deep Held
Millions
Opinions
Values
Beliefs
Meaning
Decode
What chance do we have ?
Filters
Intended
Message
Filters
Message
Transmitted
PARADIGMS
Message
Received
PARADIGMS
Response mechanisms
Anticipate degree of change
Copyright © 2012.www.educational-Business-Articles.com
Fight or flight…?
Freeze or Energise..?
the neurocircuitry for fear is genetically encoded
in the mammalian brain.
Panksepp writes:
"The emotional experience of fear appears to arise from
a conjunction of neural processes that prompt animals to
hide (freeze) if danger is distant or inescapable, or
to flee when danger is close but can be avoided."
Freeze or Energise..?
With “very weak stimulation, animals exhibit…a freezing
response, common when animals are placed in
circumstances where they have previously been hurt
frightened. Humans stimulated in these brain areas
report being engulfed
by intense anxiety.”
or
Social engagement system
Porges's polyvagal theory proposes an automatic-response
hierarchy emphasizing that when mammals detect they are in a
safe
environment, their bodies automatically activate the more
recently developed myelinated branch of the vagus nerve that
promotes "calm states, to self-soothe and to engage."
What Porges calls the social engagement system determines the quality of
interpersonal exchanges, regulating "the features that we show
other people, the facial expression, the intonation of our voice,
the head nods, even the hand movements…."
Remember, 55% of what you say you don’t control !
Conclusions
Sender: take responsibility for
the whole process
What I think, affects what I will
say
What I think, will be
communicated
Receiver: take responsibility for
the whole process
Section 2
Gaining input on which to make decisions
How to ask good questions
Question type







Open/Closed
Where ?
Why ?
How ?
When ?
What ?
Who ?
Purpose







General advice
Seek facts
Put on defensive
Seek facts
Seek facts
Effective in root cause
Seek facts
Bias in decision making
The Big Idea: Before You Make That Big
Decision...
by Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo, and Olivier
Sibony
Harvard Business Review, June 2011
Section 3
Examples of
Communication
affecting
decision
making
Communication in
decision making
Would you enter this
industry?
The Value Escalator
Sell pub
Change manager
Invest capital
Improve marketing
Buy pub
Pub Sales
Monte Carlo Simulation
Net Present Value
Beer Contract
Overseas Campus
Malaysia Project;
Annual Surplus (bars) & Cumulative cash flows (line)
20,000
20,000
15,000
15,000
10,000
4 years of operating losses
5,000
5,000
0
0
1
(5,000)
(10,000)
2
3
4
5
6
7
£9.1m peak cum
cash investment
(5,000)
(10,000)
cashflow
surplus
10,000
Acknowledgements
Gordon Robb
VR Growth (formerly Vivid Red) is a People Focussed
Business Consultancy that is helping organisations realise
their visions through dramatically increasing the
effectiveness of individuals and teams
http://vrgrowth.co.uk/
http://www.chanceandchoice.com/course-overview/brain-and-mind/