Blonde MBADocumenting the life of a blonde MBA student in sunny California. Maybe some blondes DO have brains!

In the spirit of Election 2008, I just got out of the movie “W,” the new Oliver Stone biopic of, who else, President Bush. All politics and views aside, I think the movie highlighted one of the most important aspects to consider when making a decision about any leader, whether a leader of your business or of your country: decision-making.

From my organizational behavior class, there are basically three theories of decision-making (WOW some of these “b-school theories” actually make sense, AND I remember them?!?). The first decision-making theory basically involves looking at all possible alternatives & reviewing as much unbiased information as possible to make the optimal, ideal decision. This is the best-case scenario, but there is often a lack of time and information to find this optimal decision. The second theory is in picking the first available decision that meets your decision criteria, even if better options are available to at least make a “satisficing” decision. While this method is faster, it may not be the most accurate and best decision.

The final theory has to do with using images and feelings to guide the making of a decision, using decision frames of past history and successes as well as a “gut-feeling” and intuition to come up with a decision in the absence of perfect information.  This ability is probably the best and worse kind of decision-making there is, depending on if your intuition is right or not! While any leader needs to have intution, it should also have some basis to it with as much information as possible.

Most decisions are not routine as leaders do not have any guidelines for how to make them and do not know what the outcomes will be. That said, leaders need to have a combination of these decision-making abilities to make the best decision possible given all time or resource constraints.

Using one theory over another (i.e. usually the very subjective intution or “gut-feeling”) is not the best method and should be closely scrutinized when evaluating who is going to be our next President (or next CEO)…

Josh Brolin as "W"