The Decision Loom: A Design for Interactive Decision-Making in Organizations

At inception, a strategy is the outcome of a hierarchical process that produces a priori thinking, a set of conclusions about what policymakers believe will produce a desired outcome before empirical evidence is available. Vincent Barabba, whose career spanned the political and corporate world, provides lucid suggestions about how organizations should shape their decision making and implementation processes. He calls his concept the “decision loom” and argues that a decision-making process should weave together—like a loom—various sources of knowledge, intellectual viewpoints, and research tools to develop an initial strategy. Just as important is instituting a process of learning mechanisms and feedback loops as the strategy gets rolled out. An effective strategist does not stand pat with a priori thinking but rather adjusts and refines his approach as real world data becomes available. The major lessons of the book are distilled on pages 129-34, and a reader should selectively delve into the case studies provided by the author.