Decision-making in organizations is definitely a hard problem.

I think an uncomfortable reality is that a lot of decisions (technology, strategy, etc.) are not optimal or even rational, but more just an outcome of personal preferences.

Even data-driven approaches aren't immune since they depend on the analysis and interpretation of the data (which is subjective).

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srean 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Data informed is good. Purely data driven is a bad idea.

After all even in Physics big advances came from thought experiments. Data is one way to reason about a decision, logic and knowledgebase is another way. Both can be very powerful if one retains the humility of fallibility.

In organizations one common failure mode is that the organisational level at which decisions are made are not the same levels where the decisions are going to have their effects felt.

It's a really difficult problem to solve. Too much decentralisation is also a bad idea. You get the mess of unplanned congested cities.

	▲	cb321 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For a while now, I've been summarizing the ease with which everything turns into a "Humanity Complete" problem via: "Delegation affords so much, but trust sure is tricky." This has been observed forever in various forms/contexts. Planning & policy people call them "Wicked Problems" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem). The Philosophy of Science one goes by the Demarcation Problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem) { roughly, in the sense that the really hard nugget connects to "trust" }. At least one aspect of all of it is that trust is a little like money/capital and "faking it" is a bit like "stealing". The game theory of it is that since faking is virtually always vastly cheaper there are (eventually) huge incentives to do so, at some point by someone(s). So, almost any kind of trust/delegation structure has a strong pull toward "decay", from knock-off brands to whatever. It just takes a sadly small fraction of Prisoner's Dilemma defectors to ruin things/systems thereof. 2nd law of thermo makes order cost energy and this decay feels like almost an isomorphic (maybe even the same..?) thing. It's not just product/tech enshittification, but that might be yet another special case/example. Anyway, I have no great answers or as some responder to me a while back said, if I did, I'd "have a Nobel and possibly be the first president of the united planet".