Justifying Decisions

 

Lucy, you have some splainin' to do.

How do we justify our decisions?  Before answering that, do we even need to?  I googled "justifying decisions"  and was surprised at the number of responses.  I was also struck by the variety of replies as well.  The basic definition returned was "To justify a decision, action, or idea means to show or prove that it is reasonable or necessary".  That seems to be vague enough to fit any situation.  Who defines "reasonable?"

When I started this post I had no intention of expanding on last week's entry regarding Bud Light.  However, after starting this I soon realized that most of the recent news items regarding Bud Light have been critiques of Bud Light's justification of their marketing decisions.  It seemed that the more Bud Light tried to justify their marketing decision the madder people got.  What is the saying, "if your in a hole stop digging".  I still think there are more important things to spend my time on.  However this does highlight one aspect of justification.  Who we are justifying to and what is the relationship we have with that audience   Politicians make decisions and usually have to justify them to their constituents.  The relationship between any specific politician and their constituents is best described as one to many.  I know the name of our mayor.  I also know certain public aspects of his life.  I know that him and his wife are musicians.  If I wanted to I could goggle him and discover more about him.  Does he know anything about me?  I would say that it is unlikely that he even knows my name.  This lopsided relationship would make it very difficult for any politician to adequately justify any decision to an individual.  This would be especially true for justification of emotional factors of a decision.  Justification in these one to many relationships tends to focus on logical and rational arguments rather than emotional ones.  This appears to be the trap Bud Light has gotten into.  Much of the justification has centered around changes in the market and how Bud Light needed to attract younger consumers.  These rational justifications do not address the deep emotional feelings of the "many" and lead to more push back.  I think in these one to many relationships the less said the better.  Issue a white paper outlining the benefits of a decision and move on.

So how do we justify decisions to those with whom we share a more intimate relationship.  Specifically those around us that are impacted by our decisions.  Generally these would be friends and family.  Most of us take the feelings and needs of those close to us into consideration when making decisions.  I consider myself very fortunate in that I have not had to make any difficult decisions that affected my friends and family.  Probably the biggest decision was to move our family from our home town (The Toronto area) to New York then to Texas.  I grew up in close proximity to aunts, uncles and cousins.  By moving my children did not have that in their lives.  I have never been asked by any family to justify this decision.  This then emphasizes the importance of taking the feelings and needs of friends and family into consideration when making decisions.

The final audience for justification is the most difficult.  That is yourself.  No avoiding this one.  We are the ones that are directly affected by our decisions.  Justifying them to ourselves can make us crazy.  A legal case could be made for a politician justifying decisions to constituents.  Judges obviously have to have a legal justification for their rulings.  In most other cases it could be argued that there is no need to justify your decisions to anyone (see my disclaimer below) .  The "its your life you will decide how to live it" mindset.  This does not apply to anyone with a shred of self awareness.  We will always try to justify our decisions to ourselves.  If for no other reason other than learning from them.  If we make a decision and honestly justify it to ourselves we can learn from it especially if the outcome is not what we desired.  By honestly assessing and justifying a decision we can take what we learn from it and confidently make our next decision.  That is the goal of our decisions Control and Confidence

disclaimer:  In this the use of the pronoun "I" represents a single decision making entity.  It does not represent a single person.  As a married person "I" actually represents my wife and I.  Whether the decision is made my wife, myself or jointly by both of us that decision is our decision.