Making better decisions is one of the best skills we can develop. Good decisions save time, money, and stress. Here, we break down what makes a good decision and what we can do to improve our decision-making processes.

***

Improving our decision-making abilities is a central goal at Farnam Street. Better decisions save time, money, and stress. While it’s an investment now, in the long run, learning principles and developing a multidisciplinary lens that we can apply throughout life is a worthy investment.

As we have said before, a decision should not be judged solely on its outcome. Sometimes good decisions produce bad results. A recruiting process that has resulted in mostly excellent candidates will still occasionally fail to weed out a bad fit. It is impossible to have perfect and complete information for all the variables involved. So we do the best with what we have.

Using a decision journal can move us to that place where we are consistently making better decisions. At its core, the technique of identifying and reflecting on process from beginning to end helps us achieve the two main qualities in better decisions:

1. Using principles, not tactics
2. Looking at a situation through a multidisciplinary lens

These qualities are what we need to improve over time. And in the same way compounding interest increases our bank balance, better decisions produce exponentially better results the more of them we make. Hard decisions today, made well, prepare us to make decisions more easily in the future.

When we look around, however, to see what we can learn from others who made great decisions, we often judge based solely on the outcomes. Whether a decision by a family member to buy Coca-Cola stock in the ’80s, or Caesar to cross the Rubicon, we evaluate a decision as good based on how things turned out.

Evaluating decisions on outcomes prevents us from learning. We need to dive into a decision, cut it open and examine its parts. Regardless of what happened, learning how a decision was made is the place to find knowledge. So what does the anatomy of a great decision look like?

The Marshall Plan

After WWII, Europe was in ruins. Much of the infrastructure had been destroyed. Many people were starving, and had lost everything they possessed. Those systems we take for granted, but on which we rely daily—transportation, manufacturing, agriculture—had been devastated. The economies were essentially broken, and the countries that saw a lot of fighting had much to rebuild. But with what money? Many countries were in serious debt. Continued, widespread economic hardships were on the horizon.

In 1947, Secretary of State General George Marshall put forward a plan that has since carried his name, a plan to give a massive amount of money to several European nations. Those countries accepted, the continent was rebuilt, and Marshall is credited with one of the most positive defining acts of economics, politics, and ethics in the last century. But when you look at the thinking that went into the Marshall Plan, the reasoning behind the details, you see that it would have been a great decision regardless of the outcome.

Asking the Right Questions

At the beginning, participants asked questions. What do we want to achieve? What problems are we addressing? What does a successful outcome look like?

From there came the principles, things like: strong economies minimize social unrest; countries that work toward mutual goals are less likely to fight each other; let’s not have another war in Europe anytime soon.

Starting from these principles, decision makers evaluated the situation through a multidisciplinary lens. Economics, politics, humanitarian responsibilities, historical and psychological factors—the plan sought to address issues on many fronts and took a wide perspective into account.

The plan was developed in the State Department of the United States. It was not the work of a single individual, and contributions from many people made it into the final version that Marshall fought for in Congress.

In the end, there were three key decisions made in terms of the structure of the plan:

1. To give, versus lend, the majority of the aid
2. To require the nations receiving the aid to work out how to allocate it
3. To invite Russia to partake

Using Multiple Lenses

The decision to give rather than lend the majority of the aid was the result of looking at the situation through economic, political, and humanitarian lenses. It was also a win-win.

Immediately following the war, the European nations had put significant effort into restarting their economies. But they were doing it with borrowed dollars, needing to import far more than they were capable of exporting. Many economies needed modernization, which was impossible to fund while paying for imports at the same time. Without full economic recovery in Europe, there was great danger of a recession, or even a second depression. Basically, Europe needed money.

But economies are also about people. It is people who produce and consume and develop the economy. So it wasn’t just the countries that needed financial assistance, but the people in them. The designers of the plan knew that hungry, desperate people would only create more social unrest. They saw that if they didn’t give the money to Europe they might very well have to spend it on national security as Europe fell apart.

And we can’t discount the impact of the physical reality of the aftermath of the war that the liberating forces confronted—starving people, towns reduced to rubble. The case for humanitarian assistance was strong.

Letting the World Do the Work For You

The decision to have the participating nations allocate the aid among themselves was the answer to what the historical, political and psychological lenses revealed.

Many people felt that the approach to reparations after WWI was a significant impetus for WWII. The First World War had a similar effect on the economies and infrastructures of the nations involved. In 1918, angry at Germany, France and Britain had demanded huge sums of money. The problem was, it essentially crippled Germany economically, and caused a social and political situation that created enmity among the European nations. Many argue that it was this series of events that produced a situation in which Hitler could come to power.

The creators of the Marshall Plan were aware of this, and it was one of the elements that influenced the design of the terms. If Germany collapsed again, they might be fighting World War III in twenty years.

By asking enemies to work together and approve each other’s share, the plan created a buy-in that defused much of the anger and animosity between the nations. Just a couple of years earlier they had been at war with each other. After sacrificing so much in both lives and money, it was natural that the various peoples were angry over both who started the war, and the many violent and destructive events that were enacted over those six years.

But the US decided to not take sides and extend the alliances of the war. The plan creators realized this wouldn’t help fulfill the principles they had chosen to abide by. Europe working meant Europe working together.

Outcomes Over Optics

Inviting Russia to share in the aid was another important result of applying those political, historical, psychological, and humanitarian lenses.

The end of WWII marked the beginning of the Cold War. More nebulous by nature, starting a couple of years after the liberation of Europe and the dropping of the atomic bomb, this political climate would shape international relations for the next 40 years. The Marshall Plan took into account how best to navigate this complicated territory. Russia had been a valuable ally during the war, holding the eastern front and inflicting considerable damage on Hitler’s efforts. But immediately post-war their actions demonstrated a desire to at least influence, if not control, the political structure of the world. Their version of communism was at direct odds with US democracy, and was thus considered a legitimate threat.

Even though there was very little expectation that Russia would participate, and possibly even less desire to give them money, Russia and its allied countries were invited by both the US and the European nations to participate in the talks involving the implementation of the plan. They chose not to, and followed up with accusing the plan of being a front to American imperialist goals. This was important because it forced Russia’s hand. They could not later claim that the Iron Curtain was something that was thrust on them. It was, instead, something they deliberately chose to build.

The Marshall Plan is remembered as a great decision, not strictly because of its outcomes—though it did contribute to the debatably successful reconstruction of Europe, it did not succeed in preventing the deterioration of relations with Russia—but because it was firmly grounded in principles that were identified and executed through a multidisciplinary lens.