Diagnostics for strategic decisions

Decisions were analyzed to identify how diagnostics and types of direction influence the success of decision making. Diagnostics compare performance to norms, creating quantitative or qualitative performance gaps, or make impressionistic observations. Directions were set as an idea, problem, target or reframing. Decision adoption rates, decision value, and timliness were used to determine the success of these diagnostics and direction setting types. Reframing was found to be the most successful type of direction but was seldom used by decision makers. Targets were also quite successful. Directions based on problems and ideas were the least successful but these tactics were used far more often than targets or reframing. The diagnostics applied by decision makers also influenced decision success, with quantitative performance gaps producing the best results. Decision makers using an idea direction prefer qualitative diagnostics, although quantitative diagnostics were more successful. Problem directions were somewhat more successful with qualitative diagnostics, but were very inefficient. Target directions were successful only with quantitative diagnostics. Unlike the other types of directions, reframing was very successful when used with each diagnostic.