Decision Frameworks

Resources

Established frameworks explained through a decision-quality lens: how to apply them, and how they get gamed in practice.

Frameworks organise evidence; they do not create it. These pages explain each framework properly, then focus on the part most write-ups skip: how the framework fails or gets gamed when a team has already decided what it wants to conclude.

Choose the frame before the debate

A framework helps most when it is agreed before positions harden. Pick one here and take the structure into the next working session.

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Framework

SWOT Analysis

SWOT sorts a decision into strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Done honestly it surfaces what the business case is avoiding; done politically it becomes a justification exercise.

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PESTLE Analysis

PESTLE examines six external forces (political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental) that can reshape a decision after it is signed. It is worth running only when each factor is tied to a specific commitment, not recited as macro trends.

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Porter's Five Forces

Michael Porter's framework explains why some industries reward entrants and others destroy them, by examining five structural forces that govern profitability. It is the sharpest tool available for challenging an optimistic market entry case.

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RACI Matrix

RACI assigns four roles (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to every significant activity in a programme or decision. Its value depends on one rule being enforced: exactly one Accountable name per row.

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DACI Decision Model

DACI assigns four roles to a single decision: a Driver who moves it forward, one Approver who makes the call, Contributors who supply input, and the Informed who are told the outcome. It exists to kill decision-by-committee.

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RAPID Decision Framework

Bain's RAPID framework assigns five decision roles (Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide) so that large organisations can make consequential calls without every stakeholder holding an implicit veto.

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Weighted Scoring Model

A weighted scoring model ranks options by scoring them against weighted criteria. It is the standard tool for vendor selection and the most commonly rigged artefact in procurement, because whoever sets the weights sets the winner.

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Risk Matrix

A risk matrix plots risks by likelihood and impact so attention and mitigation budget go where exposure is greatest. Its weakness is social, not mathematical: scores get negotiated down long before the board sees the grid.

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Cost-Benefit Analysis

Cost-benefit analysis compares the full cost of a decision against its expected benefits to test whether it creates value. The technique is sound; the inputs are where advocacy does its work.

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Decision Tree Analysis

Decision tree analysis maps a decision as branching choices and chance events, attaches probabilities and outcomes, and works backwards to the option with the best expected value. Its power and its danger both come from the probabilities.

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McKinsey 7S Framework

The 7S framework tests whether seven elements of an organisation (strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills) are aligned enough for a change to succeed. Misalignment among the soft elements is where transformations quietly die.

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ADKAR Change Management

ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) models change at the level of the individual, not the programme. Its claim is blunt: if any one element is missing in the people affected, the change stalls at that exact point.

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Kotter's 8-Step Change Model

John Kotter's model sets out eight steps for leading major change, from establishing urgency to anchoring new behaviour in culture. Most failed transformations can name the step they skipped, usually the first or the last.

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Balanced Scorecard

Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard translates strategy into measures across four perspectives (financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth) so leadership can see whether the strategy is working before the financials say so.

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OKR Framework

Objectives and Key Results pair a qualitative goal with a small set of measurable results that define success. Born at Intel and popularised by Google, OKRs create focus, and get corrupted as soon as they are wired to compensation.

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Pre-Mortem Analysis

Gary Klein's pre-mortem assumes the decision has already failed and works backwards to the causes. The inversion legitimises dissent that ordinary risk reviews suppress, provided it is run before the room has committed.

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Red Teaming

Red teaming assigns a designated team to argue the case against a plan, with the data access and licence to do it seriously. It came out of military and intelligence practice, where the cost of unexamined consensus is measured in lives.

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Assumption Mapping

Every plan rests on assumptions it does not announce. Assumption mapping writes them down and places each on two axes (how much depends on it, and how much evidence supports it) so pressure-testing starts where it matters.

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Scenario Planning

Scenario planning builds a small set of structured narratives about how the operating environment could plausibly develop, then asks whether the decision survives in each. It is not forecasting but a defence against betting everything on one version of tomorrow.

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MoSCoW Prioritisation

MoSCoW sorts requirements into Must have, Should have, Could have and Won't have this time. Everyone remembers the first category; the method stands or falls on the last one, because scope is only decided when someone writes down what is out.

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Kano Model

Noriaki Kano's model sorts product attributes by how they affect satisfaction: basics customers assume, performance factors they weigh, and delighters they never thought to ask for. Its sharpest commercial lesson is that the categories move, always in one direction.

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Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower matrix sorts work by two questions: is it urgent, and is it important. It is honestly described as a personal productivity tool rather than a decision framework, and its executive value lies in one diagnosis: how much of the calendar urgency has captured.

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Decision Journal

A decision journal records what was decided, what was expected and why, at the moment of deciding. Months later it settles the argument that memory always wins: what did we actually know at the time?

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