Information or Emotions: How to Make Decisions Based on Facts

To make a well-informed decision, facts alone are not enough: you need to verify their truthfulness and relevance, and then filter them while avoiding bias. What prevents us from doing this? Here’s an excerpt from problem-solving expert Nat Greene’s book, “Stop Guessing! The 9 Behaviors of Great Problem Solvers.”

Opinion-Based Decisions: How Are They Disguised?

Decisions based on opinions are often disguised as fact-based decisions. A common example in business is turning to the “collective wisdom” or the expertise of internal or external experts. In these cases, decisions are made by voting or subjective ranking of ideas, relying on our perceptions of the situation. Some problem-solving methods even encourage this approach.

Imagine you’re choosing a restaurant to visit with friends. In this case, it’s easy to reach a “consensus”—the place chosen by the majority will likely bring the most enjoyment to the group. The “collective mind” works well for maximizing preferences, but unfortunately, it’s often used in situations where it’s completely inappropriate. If you’re in a hospital, you probably wouldn’t ask a dozen random people which incision to make first in surgery. A good surgeon plans treatment based on facts—data about the patient and their own knowledge of anatomy.

The catch in the restaurant example is that people’s personal preferences are treated as facts. The problem is defined as: “We don’t know which restaurant most of us will like.” To reach consensus, you need to gather facts about this problem. In some cases, maximizing preferences is the goal—when each person’s choice is treated as a real fact. But when the goal is different, you can’t solve the problem by focusing only on opinions.

Sometimes people make decisions based on their own or others’ assumptions about facts, without checking the facts themselves. This is a special problem—assuming something is “common knowledge.”

The Pitfalls of Opinion-Based Decisions

In business, it’s common to see opinion-based decisions lead to all sorts of trouble. A company gathers a group for a brainstorming session with a long list of ideas for future work. They then set priorities, often based on the subjective opinions of those present—for example, asking everyone to vote for three items from the list and then choosing those with the most votes. Wouldn’t it be better to do a mathematical analysis and assess which option would have the greatest impact on the company, and then set priorities based on that? Only by using facts can we understand what truly brings the most objective value to the business.

Opinion-based decisions also lead to dead ends when they’re mistakenly applied to practical problems. For example, in my city, when people think about visiting someone’s home with their child, they worry about whether there are firearms in the house, but don’t worry at all about the presence of a swimming pool.

Quality vs. Poor Fact-Finding

Gathering information to understand and solve a problem is the foundation of any problem-solving work. You need to get the necessary facts to understand what needs to be changed or fixed. Quality fact-finding will quickly lead you to the root cause of the problem; poor fact-finding will create confusion and lead you astray.

Once, we worked with a specialized manufacturer that sold components to other businesses. The company planned to move its operations from Western to Eastern Europe to take advantage of cheaper labor. All the facts related to reducing production costs were considered and understood, but the company initially overlooked other variables and almost made a big mistake.

After collecting data on how the move would affect order fulfillment times, the company discovered that lead times would increase significantly. A survey of their most valuable clients showed that most of them prioritized fast order fulfillment, and the current lead times were the main reason for their loyalty. The company revised its plans, saving a lot of time and money, and redirected those resources to further reduce lead times, which allowed it to gain a stronger market position and increase profits in its segment.

Digging Deeper

First, make sure the information you’ve gathered is completely accurate. Especially when large amounts of data are involved, a good problem solver will constantly check whether the information from sensors, research, and so on truly reflects hard facts. Often, people encounter “data” that has been heavily processed and no longer matches reality.

A few years ago, my team worked with a company specializing in protective coatings. Their phones were ringing off the hook with calls from angry customers. Some were so disappointed that they switched suppliers.

The customer service team knew people were complaining about delayed deliveries, but the company’s statistics didn’t confirm this: their on-time and complete delivery rate was 98%, meaning 98 out of 100 orders were delivered on time and in full. This was the highest rate in the industry, so the situation was puzzling. Could one late or incomplete order out of fifty really have such a big impact on overall service?

We checked the customer support call logs and found that almost all complaints were about delivery delays. This made us question the accuracy of the company’s statistics. The team carefully reviewed the code that generated delivery reports and discovered that the system calculated on-time and complete delivery based on the last entered delivery date, not the original promised date. Delivery managers would agree with customers to change dates, and the updated dates were used in the reports. When the team fixed the code, they found the real on-time delivery rate was only 37%. They used this up-to-date data to identify critical links in the supply chain and ultimately solved the key problem causing customer dissatisfaction.

Checking Relevance

The facts you seek must be relevant and directly related to your problem. I often see people get lost in data from computers, hoping that some piece of information will lead to interesting conclusions. There’s nothing wrong with using statistical analysis as a tool, and the ability to process large amounts of data is helpful. But you still need to understand: even when relying on statistics, you’re still making guesses.

What is a relevant fact? It’s a fact that answers your specific question and moves you to the next step in solving the problem. Once you find the right variable, you should get facts to clearly understand its dynamics and what controls it. Don’t waste effort trying to analyze everything you come across.

Long ago, before cheap sensors and big data, good problem solvers knew how to find facts. Today, to be a good problem solver, you don’t need to blindly trust data streams. When you measure and study something yourself and take your time, your brain focuses more effectively on the task and doesn’t automatically try to grab everything at once. In a way, it’s a matter of concentration and discipline.

Avoiding Bias

The last major obstacle to quality facts is our own biases. Even if we can’t always test a decision based on opinions or assumptions, subjective perception can seriously hinder problem-solving. I’m sure you’ve seen this in both corporate and government settings. Good problem solvers know how to recognize situations where their own emotions or prejudices are getting in the way.

One morning, I was helping my kids get ready for school and noticed one of them looked sick. I was suspicious: lately, things hadn’t been going well for him at school, and that day he had an assignment he was really worried about—he had to recite a poem from memory. He’d already missed school a few times, and I felt that by the end of the school year he was just a bit tired. The teachers seemed to think he was just being lazy.

But my wise and patient wife decided to take his temperature—something we hadn’t even discussed as part of the “problem.” To our surprise, the thermometer read 100.4°F. Not the end of the world, but a solid reason to stay home that day. Hard facts triumphed over an opinion based on bias.

Right Now: Make Decisions Based on Facts

Pick a tough problem you’ve recently faced or are still working on. Write down or mentally list the relevant facts you know and make a list of the opinions “surrounding” the problem. Then challenge your “facts.” See if some of them are actually just your opinions or subjective perceptions. If you’re brave enough, try this with a political issue and share your thoughts with others—so they can help you analyze it.