Imagine you’re planning to move to a new city. You ask your two friends for advice on whether you should move to Nashville or Phoenix. One, “Freya,” is only able to use logic and reason to make her recommendation. The other, “Adam,” can only use his emotions to make his suggestion. Who’s advice do you think you would use?
Most of us would almost immediately answer “Freya.” Everyone from the Greeks to “7 steps to make a decision” says that emotion has little to no place in decision-making. But I’m afraid I’ve asked you a trick question. It turns out that while Adam’s recommendation would probably be untrustworthy, Freya would likely be unable to make any decision at all.
How can this be? As much as we know that emotion is – by itself – a poor guide to making serious choices, emotion is the only way we can actually weigh our options. Imagine this: instead of asking Freya or Adam we decided to use a computer algorithm. We could plug in all the pros and cons of each city – Phoenix has low humidity while Nashville has a great live music scene, etc. But how would the algorithm combine all those pieces of information into a decision? Should it just count up the number of pros and subtract the total cons for each location? Immediately we would say, “Of course not, some benefits and costs would be much more important.” Okay, you know that, but how does the algorithm know which ones are more important?
This is exactly where our ability to weigh options is indispensable. There is no objectively right answer to which city is better, there’s only a city that offers us more of the things that matter most to us. And “matters to us” can only be determined by our emotions. Live music can’t be intrinsically worth more or less than freedom from frizzy hair and stale crackers.
Emotion is what gives terrain to our decision landscape. Without emotions, all options are equal – and in such a flat landscape there’s no way to determine which way to travel. That is why Freya would likely be unable to make any kind of recommendation. She could probably tell you all about each city – but come up short if you asked her which she preferred. It’s only once we have determined what matters most to us using our emotions, that we can then can use our logic and reasoning to determine which location satisfies the most of those.
But business decisions are different, right…?
It’s easy to see how emotions are necessary to make decisions that depend on subjective measurements. But with objective decisions it still seems that logic and data are the only things we need, and indeed should use. Data-based decision-making is the cornerstone of success! Using data in decision-making unquestionably improves outcomes. From reducing readmissions in hospitals to optimizing email campaigns, evidence shows again and again that using data improves outcomes. But here’s the rub: how did you decide that those where the things you needed to work on in the first place? At some point, somewhere, every decision has to start with a value judgement. Do we try to save the greatest absolute number of lives, or the most years of life? Are we growing this company’s volume to maximize its sale or IPO price, or building sustainability for long-term ownership? Often, these value judgments are hidden, assumed, or even made subconsciously. But they are still there. Even when we consciously make them, we almost always forget that they are different from the fact-based steps that result from first setting that cardinal direction emotionally – and that allows us to continue believing in the illusion that we’re making such great decisions on reason and data alone.Don’t be a one-winged bird
If you’ve made it this far, you might be quite confused how a blog like this is on a site like Merakinos. Isn’t this entire business based on helping people use data, you could rightfully ask. Here’s why. We first need to recognize that our value judgments, which can only come from emotion and are essential for every decision we make, are fundamentally separate functions from what data and reason can provide. You can never use data to prove or disprove these value judgments, so the only way to get everyone moving the same direction is to have everyone emotionally bought into that same value. And when we pretend or fool ourselves into thinking those value judgments are based on data, it makes it nearly impossible to adjust them or even listen to someone with a different value base. The second half is that when we do finally recognize the proper role of emotion, we can then keep it out of places where it doesn’t work so well. The most effective decisions come when we say, “This is what I value and care about and these are the costs I’m willing to tolerate to achieve it. Here’s what the data say is the most efficient way to get there.”The most effective decisions come when we say, “This is what I value and care about and these are the costs I’m willing to tolerate to achieve it. here’s what the data say is the most efficient way to get there.”Emotion can easily mislead us if we rely solely on it to direct our actions. The very existence of reduced sentencing for “crimes of passion” is a legal acknowledgement of how bad emotion is at guiding us. On the other hand, data alone can’t tell you what your goals should be, or what you should care about. Ultimately, we need both. Logic and reason are not the antithesis or enemies of emotion, but rather they are each essential pieces of our decision-making. As perhaps the best embodiment of this principle said, “Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.” – Leonard Nimoy (Spock).
