It's important to remember that people are the real decision makers.

Tools and techniques for decision making:  Means, not ends

However you go about making decisions, it's important to remember that people are the real decision makers.  Tools and techniques such as decision tress help to generate insight into a problem, stimulate communication and build a shared understanding of it, but they cannot take the decision for you.  In the last analysis, business decisions are about people - in every sense. 

Our favoured courses of action often flow more from our own values than from what is objectively 'right' in a situation.  Our estimates of probability are similarly subjective.  And in assessing impact, we are likely to be highly subjective too, perhaps concentrating on those areas of downside or upside that affect us most directly. 
The danger of using models such as those discussed in the previous postings is that they can give the illusion of objectivity.  Writing things down and analysing them is important, but the main benefit of doing so is to bring clarity to a decision, rather than precision.

We have to remember that tools and techniques are only as good as the information we put into them.  They are dependent on the extent and accuracy of information available at the time the decision is taken.  No matter how we present or analyse the information we have, we cannot add to it or make it any more reliable than it already is.  All we can do is aim for a shared sense of what we know and what we don't know, to build an informed consensus for particular courses of action.

Only people can build a bridge from the information that is available to a decision that can be taken forward.


Tools for risk assessement: and decisions making:
Probability
Subjective probabilities
Impact: hard and soft
Decision trees
Expected value
Fatal downsides
Life decisions
A business decision
Break-even analysis
Risk profiles
Probability/Impact matrix