Decision making and leadership practices

Decision Making

The strategic decision for Microsoft that will be discussed in the decision to proceed with Windows 8. Launching a new version of a flagship product is always a big decision, and this was no exception. Windows 8 represented a major overhaul of the company's signature product, redesigning the interface in particular with the objective of having it work across multiple technologies (i.e. tablets, laptops) rather than segregating different versions of Windows for different devices, as was the case in the past. This decision made the Windows experience perhaps better for the casual user, but has caused no end of frustration for the power user who uses Windows for work. There are few competitors, but at the same time the strategic decision to court the consumer looking for cat videos has created an opportunity for competition to emerge for the enterprise user.

Now, the author does not sit in on Microsoft strategic meetings, so let's be realistic in that we do not know for certain what decision-making processes were used. The Kahneman (2011) methodology is an effective tool for understanding a decision-making processes but it is intended for use by the person who is making the decision. The first step in this process is to check for self-interested biases. This does not appear to be the case, as there is a strategic case to be made for the decision. The second question Kahneman asks is whether or not the team has fallen in love with its proposal. This is the affect heuristic. In this case, the answer might well be yes. The company's massive enterprise base did not seem to factor much into the question, as Windows 8 represents a solution to a problem that this major customer group didn't have -- computers that work like tablets represents a steep decline in functionality that alienates enterprise customers. The third question is whether or not there was groupthink? In this case, it is possible but doubtful. There must have been people, in particular those who have to sell Windows 8 to the company's largest customers, who would have argued against the new strategic direction. So only question 2 appears to have introduced bias into the decision-making process.

Of the other questions, there is definitely a question with availability bias, because the company was trying to get in front of a trend, and was not willing to wait to explore all options. This created anchoring bias, where the base idea seems to have been the overriding decision-making factor. I do not interpret any halo effect coming into this decision. Another methodology for evaluating a decision is proposed by Sull (2007). The strategy loop is a common way of evaluating decisions, but in all honesty it seems to not be a factor here. There have been very few revisions and enterprise still rejects Windows 8 as a result (Reed, 2014). The revision part of the process is critical, and when feedback is ignored and revisions not made, the strategy is more likely to fail.

In general, a good decision-making process requires vigorous debate, and that is something fostered at my organization. When such debate does not take place, the decisions can be problematic, but ultimately most decisions are made after debate eliminates many of the biases and heuristic errors that plague decision-making at other organizations.