Is Decision-Based Evidence Making Necessarily BadS U .docx

Is Decision-Based
Evidence Making
Necessarily Bad?
S U M M E R 2 0 1 0 V O L . 5 1 N O. 4
R E P R I N T N U M B E R 5 1 4 1 9
Peter M. Tingling and Michael J. Brydon
SUMMER 2010 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW
71COURTESY OF HERMAN MILLER
Some decisions
can’t be made
based on evidence
at all. The facts are
too ambiguous —
such as the rejection
by focus groups of
the aesthetics of
Herman Miller’s
Aeron chair.
DECISION MAKING IS the essence of manage-
ment, which explains why so much attention
continues to be focused on how to do it better. In

recent years, much has been written about evidence-
based — or fact-based — decision making. The core
idea is that decisions supported by hard facts and
sound analysis are likely to be better than decisions
made on the basis of instinct, folklore or informal
anecdotal evidence. One need look no further than
the shelves of the local bookstore to see an unprece-
dented collection of well-written titles extolling the
virtues of data and analysis, such as Competing on
Analytics (Davenport and Harris), Moneyball (Lewis)
and Super Crunchers (Ayres). These books, like deci-
sion-making courses in business schools and the
prescriptions of management consultants, focus on
how to improve decision outcomes through improved
process and technique. Many organizations have
heeded the call and have invested heavily in data pro-
cessing infrastructure and analytic tools, based on the
assumption that better evidence-based decisions will

follow naturally from these investments. While this
focus on evidence is a welcome change from “thin slicing” or
purely instinctive or
intuitive snap judgments, these prescriptions tend to downplay
the more fundamental
questions: What is the relationship between evidence and the
decision process that an
organization actually uses? Why is evidence collected in the
first place?
Our research and consulting experience suggests that evidence
is not as frequent an
Many managers think they’ve committed their organizations
to evidence-based decision making — but have instead, without
realizing it, committed to decision-based evidence making.
Is that all bad? What can be done to fix it?
BY PETER M. TINGLING AND MICHAEL J. BRYDON
Is Decision-Based
Evidence Making
Necessarily Bad?
THE LEADING
QUESTION
Managers
want ‘fact-
based’
decisions.
Are they
getting them?

FINDINGS
! Evidence is not as
frequent an input
to decisions as
suggested by the
business press.
! Not all decisions
use evidence in
the same way.
Evidence can be
used to make,
inform or sup-
port a decision.
! Managers need
to be aware
that evidence
is shaped by
subordinates
to meet perceived
expectations of
company leaders.
E S S AY
72 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW SUMMER 2010
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E S S AY
input to a decision process as suggested by the popu-

lar press. For example, we recently studied a major
North American financial institution as it consid-
ered a proposal to change its enterprise e-mail
platform from one technology to another. The orga-
nization had conducted two prior reviews of e-mail
systems from major vendors and had twice recom-
mended remaining with the existing supplier.
However, the head of a small but influential and
profitable division of the company advocated switch-
ing platforms in order to provide better integration
with a specialized tool used only within his division.
When asking staff to conduct the third major analy-
sis, a director of the company’s information
technology group recommended that the project
manager produce a report that would support a
change of vendor. A project team member told us,
“The executives have already made up their minds….
We are being told that this is the way that we are going,

we need to get on board — be team players — and
make the decision work out to be [the new choice].”
Clearly, the ideal evidence-based decision pro-
cess was subverted in this case by the perceived
requirement to marshal facts and analysis to sup-
port a decision that had already been made elsewhere
in the organization. We call this practice decision-
based evidence making and argue that it is more
widespread than many managers acknowledge. The
purpose of this article is to examine the practice and
to answer three fundamental questions:
■ Why does decision-based evidence making occur
in organizations?
■ Is decision-based evidence making necessarily bad?
■ And, if decision-based evidence making is inevi-
table in organizations, what can be done to lessen
its negative impacts?
Why Does Decision-Based
Evidence Making Occur?

Managers use different approaches when making
decisions, ranging from highly analytical and algo-
rithmic to ad hoc and intuitive. Rather than
converging on a single best approach, most norma-
tive models of decision making emphasize context
and adaptability. The models suggest that a deci-
sion-making approach should be tailored to fit the
particular characteristics of the decision problem.
Thus, an algorithmic approach is well suited to
highly structured decision problems in which the
ends and means are well understood. Intuition and
bargaining are more appropriate for poorly struc-
tured decision problems with multiple, conflicting
ends and uncertain means.
The problem with the flexible, contextual ap-
proach is that the role of evidence is unclear. In some
cases, hard evidence is critical in determining a deci-
sion outcome. In other cases, evidence is merely

symbolic; it is used to lend legitimacy to the decision
and signal the rationality of the decision makers. In
this article, we impose structure on this loose contin-
uum by identifying three distinct roles for evidence in
decision-making practice, depending on whether it is
being used to make, inform or support a decision. (See
“The Role of Evidence in Decision Making.”)
Make a Decision
Evidence is used to make a decision whenever the
decision follows directly from the evidence. For
example, consider the choice of the optimal loca-
tion of a new distribution facility. The objective is
to minimize the cost of the facility, where cost is a
function of several quantifiable factors such as
route lengths, demand patterns, land availability
and local tax incentives. Qualitative and noneco-
nomic factors do not fit well into this mode of
decision making and must be either ignored or
transformed into quantitative evidence through

“pricing out” or similar techniques. The objective
facts regarding each of the decision alternatives (the
potential facility locations) are then used as inputs
into an optimization algorithm, and the location
with the overall minimum cost is provided as out-
put. The combination of data, a cost model and an
optimization algorithm make the decision with
minimal human intervention.
The success of evidence-based decision making
in highly structured environments such as location
planning and supply chain management is univer-
sally acknowledged. The recent push toward
evidence-based decision making in medicine sug-
gests that even incomplete or provisional evidence
(expressed as probabilities) can be valuable in less-
structured, ambiguous decision environments.
Indeed, while research shows that many managers
have yet to adopt analytic approaches, head-to-head

comparisons in which algorithmic, evidence-based
SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU SUMMER 2010 MIT SLOAN
MANAGEMENT REVIEW 73
techniques are evaluated against impressionistic
and intuitive judgments of experts show that algo-
rithmic techniques often provide better results, even
in unstructured decision contexts such as granting
parole or predicting job satisfaction.
The primary risk of making decisions by relying
exclusively on hard evidence is that the algorithms and
models used to transform evidence into a decision
provide an incomplete or misleading representation of
reality. There are many examples in finance, for exam-
ple, where the models used by traders misspecified
important real-world dependencies and risks. As the
collapse of companies such as Long-Term Capital
Management LP and The Bear Stearns Companies Inc.

attests, the organizational downside created by a com-
mitment to misspecified models can be significant.
Inform a Decision
Evidence is used to inform a decision whenever the
decision process combines hard, objective facts with
qualitative inputs, such as intuition or bargaining
with other stakeholders. The role of evidence in in-
forming decisions is thus akin to due diligence. For
example, in a succession planning decision, objective
evidence about the candidates’ past performance in
managerial roles is often an important input to the
decision process. However, subjective, impressionis-
tic information is typically combined with hard
evidence when making the final decision. Bargaining,
expressions of power and other organizational ele-
ments that do not fit within the orthodox model of
rational choice may also enter into such decisions.
The evidence-based inputs to the decision
process either confirm or disconfirm the decision

makers’ initial subjective beliefs and preferences. If
the evidence is confirmatory, decision makers can
move forward, confident that they have “the num-
bers” required to support their choice. However, a
dilemma arises if the evidence disconfirms the ini-
tial subjective decision. The decision makers must
either trust the evidence (in which case they have
implicitly switched to the make mode described
above) or side with their gut.
When asked, managers report that they routinely
grant evidence priority over their impressionistic
assessments. For example, in a survey of the capital
budgeting practices of large American companies,
45% of respondents said they would reject a capital
investment opportunity that had a favorable “stra-
tegic analysis” if the net present value (NPV) of the
opportunity was negative. However, as illustrated in
the example of the enterprise e-mail system, execu-

tives often provide analysts with subtle (and, in
some cases, unsubtle) signals regarding the desired
outcome of a formal, evidence-based analysis. Our
research shows that senior decision makers are
often unaware that evidence has been shaped by
subordinates to conform to the perceptions of
THE ROLE OF EVIDENCE IN DECISION MAKING
Not all decisions incorporate evidence in the same way, or
intend to marshal it toward the same end. This chart shows three
roles that
evidence can play, depending on whether the aim is to make,
inform or support a decision.
ROLE OF EVIDENCE IN DECISION MAKING DESCRIPTION
ARCHETYPAL DECISION RISKS
Make decision Evidence forms the basis of
the decision
Facilities location Poor decisions due to
misspecified models
Inform decision
Evidence is one of several
inputs to the decision
process

Diagnosis, strategic
planning
Mismatch between
evidence and other inputs
requires shift to “make”
or “support” roles
Support decision Evidence is created to
support a decision made
using other inputs
New product development,
technology adoption
Demoralization of analysts;
poor decisions due to
decision biases and false
consensus
Evidence DecisionDecision
Process
Evidence
DecisionIntuition,
Experience,
Bargaining, etc.
Decision
Process
DecisionIntuition,
Experience,

Bargaining, etc.
Decision
Process
Evidence
SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU74 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT
REVIEW SUMMER 2010
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management. Top managers may receive little dis-
confirming evidence and, as a consequence, may
underestimate the extent to which evidence is being
trumped by intuition.
Support a Decision
Evidence is used to support a decision whenever the
evidence is gathered or modified for the sole purpose
of lending legitimacy to a decision that has already
been made. This is distinct from making decisions
without formal evidence. Organizations are rou-
tinely faced with complex, poorly structured
decisions for which unambiguous evidence favoring

a course of action is simply unavailable. To cite a
classic example, Herman Miller Inc. discovered that
focus groups disliked the novel aesthetics of its new
Aeron chair. Management of the company ultimately
chose to disregard the disconfirming evidence pro-
vided by the focus groups and launched the new
chair anyway. The Aeron chair — which went on to
become enormously successful — is not an example
of decision-based evidence making because no evi-
dence was manufactured to support bringing the
chair to market. Instead, the culture of Herman
Miller was such that it was possible to make a deci-
sion without or in spite of empirical evidence.
In other organizations, formal evidence is held
in much higher regard and disconfirming evidence
cannot simply be dismissed. Much depends on the
cultural and formal norms of the organization and
its external stakeholders. Decision-based evidence

making is most prevalent whenever evidence is
highly valued within the organization (that is, evi-
dence is effectively “mandatory”) but a conflict
exists between the evidence and the decision mak-
ers’ strongly held beliefs. Decision makers in these
circumstances cannot simply override the discon-
firming evidence (as in the case of the Aeron chair)
but are instead more likely to rewrite the evidence
so that it supports their beliefs.
A natural consequence of the push toward evi-
dence-based decision making is that the norms
requiring evidence are becoming increasingly
explicit and rigid. For example, Harrah’s Entertain-
ment Inc. CEO Gary Loveman requires that the
effectiveness of new incentive programs at the com-
pany’s casinos be confirmed with small-scale
experiments before a decision can be made to imple-
ment the programs companywide. This is not to

suggest that the implicit pressure to manufacture er-
satz evidence is a new phenomenon. Indeed, during
Robert McNamara’s “whiz kids” era at the Ford Motor
Company, interns reportedly cut up copies of The
Wall Street Journal and inserted them into binders
and boxes. This voluminous “evidence” was wheeled
into the boardroom to demonstrate the depth of the
analysis supporting their recommendations.
Is Decision-Based Evidence
Making Necessarily Bad?
The downside of organizational contempt for dis-
confirming evidence is clear. Consider Vince
Kaminski’s frustrating tenure as the managing direc-
tor for research at Enron Corp. prior to the company’s
demise. Each deal undertaken by Enron was sup-
posed to have a complete risk analysis conducted by
Kaminski and Enron’s team of approximately 50
highly skilled mathematicians and analysts. How-
ever, as Enron became increasingly focused on deal

volume and increasingly hostile to facts and analysis,
the risk analysis became a charade.
The implosion of Enron has joined the Bay of Pigs
invasion and the space shuttle Challenger disaster in
the canon of cautionary tales warning decision mak-
ers of the perils of selective fact reading. But even if
decision-based evidence making does not result in a
high-profile fiasco, the practice sends powerful sig-
nals to others about organizational priorities, who
has power and who does not, and the value the orga-
nization places on facts and analysis. In short, the way
in which an organization’s senior leadership uses evi-
dence during decision making matters deeply to the
people responsible for creating the evidence.
We watched a few years ago as a large architec-
tural and engineering company decided to replace
its conventional computer monitors with smaller,
sleeker LCD monitors. Although such a decision

could have been justified in many different ways
(such as improved aesthetics, reduced power con-
sumption or simply employee satisfaction), the
company chose to construct an elaborate formal
cost-benefit analysis that included the fact that the
new monitors required less physical space. However,
as was pointed out by a senior manager involved in
the process, these benefits were imaginary: After all,
the firm would not actually recoup any of its real
SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU SUMMER 2010 MIT SLOAN
MANAGEMENT REVIEW 75
estate costs following the purchase of the flat moni-
tors. Finally, after others began to question the
legitimacy of the analysis, the managing director
stopped the process and made the decision by fiat.
A habitual reliance on ceremonial decision pro-
cesses and devalued evidence can have serious

organizational side effects. Massive investments in
information systems and analytical tools are wasted
if the critical resources in the organization’s analytic
capability are repeatedly demoralized and humili-
ated by having their efforts dismissed, overruled or
altered. These analysts may begin to self-censure and,
anticipating management expectations, present only
confirming evidence. On the other hand, many deci-
sion environments exist where evidence (based on
historical data) cannot possibly tell the whole story.
Many important phenomena are inherently unpre-
dictable, and an analysis of historical evidence is
unlikely to provide much insight.
To illustrate, consider our experience with a mid-
sized credit union that was contemplating a switch
from its existing wealth management system to a
new one developed by a startup company. A formal
analysis of the two alternatives showed that they

were similar in terms of projected ROI and other
conventional financial measures. However, the head
of wealth management preferred the system from
the startup company because its modern architec-
ture offered the promise of increased flexibility. The
chief operating officer, in contrast, worried about
the survivability of a startup and the risk of being
stranded with an unsupported system.
Neither executive could find convincing support
for their positions. On one hand, the head of wealth
management did not know how his business would
evolve over the next few years and was therefore un-
able to estimate the “option value” of increased
flexibility offered by the new platform. On the other
hand, software is often subject to direct and indirect
increasing returns to adoption. As the COO pointed
out, their incumbent platform was widely used
within the industry. The stability provided by a large

installed base was extremely important to the credit
union — perhaps more important than the func-
tionality of the software itself. Markets for such
products tend to tip in favor of a single industry
standard. However, as owners of Betamax and HD
DVD players will attest, predicting the winner in
such a standards war is extremely difficult.
Clearly, the leadership of the credit union could
not rely on historical evidence and formal models;
instead, they had to place bets on the future of their
business based on intuition and rough consensus.
However, both executives recognized the signal their
actions would send to other organizations. Small,
regional credit unions tend not to compete directly
against each other and have a tradition of sharing
both infrastructure and knowledge. The head of
wealth management recognized that several other
smaller credit unions were facing the same decision

regarding their wealth management platforms and
would be more likely to follow the larger credit
union’s lead if they believed that the decision to
switch was the result of careful, rational economic
analysis. The executives reasoned that their decision
to switch to a new platform would be used as
evidence in the decision processes of other organi-
zations. By signaling rigor and rationality in their
own decision process, they could perhaps trigger an
information cascade or herding effect. Herding by
other companies would benefit the credit union by
giving the startup provider a large enough installed
base to obviate concerns about long-term surviv-
ability. The head of wealth management therefore
prepared a comprehensive formal business case to
support the credit union’s decision to switch plat-
forms. The report was ultimately shared with other
credit unions and, as predicted, several of these or-

ganizations decided to migrate to the new platform.
As this example illustrates, decision-based evi-
dence making is not always a practice to be avoided.
As the credit union executives recognized, evidence
can be used not only to make or inform a decision but
also to support a decision, to signal rationality and to
instill others with confidence that a good decision was
made. Whether such signals are effective and whether
they ultimately help or hurt the organization depends
critically on the nature of the decision itself and the
intended audience for the manufactured evidence. As
the example of the architectural and engineering
company illustrates, decision-based evidence making
that is directed at a well-informed internal audience is
almost always perceived negatively. It typically under-
mines the legitimacy of the decision it was intended
to support. In contrast, decision-based evidence
can be effective when the audience is external and

76 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW SUMMER 2010
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the manufactured evidence supports the organiza-
tion’s best guesses about a complex and unpredictable
decision environment.
What Can Be Done to Lessen
the Negative Impact of Decision-
Based Evidence Making?
One way for organizations to avoid negative decision-
based evidence making is for decision makers to have
a clear understanding of the different roles evidence
can and should play in a decision process. This im-
plies that decision makers within the organization
have the flexibility to determine what constitutes le-
gitimate justification of a particular decision. The
difficulty that arises in practice is that organizations
may have trouble differentiating between situations
in which disconfirming evidence should be heeded

and situations in which disconfirming evidence can
safely be dismissed. Clearly, Enron was wrong to sys-
tematically ignore the formal analysis of its risk
management team. However, the Aeron chair was an
enormous commercial success, thereby vindicating
Herman Miller’s decision to discount the negative re-
action to the chair by focus groups.
Ultimately, the leadership of the organization
must take responsibility for such judgments. To help,
we provide the following guidelines:
1Understand the nature of the decision problem
and assess the potential contribution of formal
evidence to the quality of the decision process. There
are many different types of problems — ranging
from new product development to adoption of
emerging technology standards — in which evi-
dence based on historical data provides little insight.
Decision makers should have the courage and the

organizational support in such environments to
make and justify a decision based on intuition, ex-
perience and consultation with others.
2Weigh the risks, costs and benefits of evidence
when advocating an evidence-based approach to
decision making. The costs should include not only
the time required to collect evidence but any nega-
tive signals created by decision-based evidence
making. For example, the decision by the architec-
tural and engineering company to replace its
conventional monitors with flat monitors was minor
in comparison to the company’s capital and operat-
ing budgets. The incremental benefit of a formal
business case was outweighed by the losses in pres-
tige and legitimacy caused by management’s initial
insistence on bogus evidence.
3Differentiate between internal and external au-
diences when engaging in decision-based

evidence making. As noted above, there are situa-
tions in which evidence has significant ceremonial
and signaling value. However, internal stakeholders
(such as employees) typically have much better
access to information than those outside of the
organization. Consequently, internal audiences are
seldom fooled by decision-based evidence making.
4Ensure that the objective evidence painstakingly
gathered by your analysts is reflected more often
than not in the decisions of the organization. If you
must feed manufactured evidence to internal audi-
ences, do so only rarely and sparingly. Enron provides
an example of an organization in which a disregard
for evidence and analysis became endemic.
There is mounting evidence in favor of evi-
dence-based decision making in a wide range of
organizational decision environments. The resistance
of many managers to rational and analytical decision-

making techniques is thus surprising. But what is
troubling is that many managers who believe they
have committed their organizations to evidence-based
decision making (and have made hefty investments to
back up this commitment) have committed instead to
decision-based evidence making. Methodology alone
cannot and should not replace managerial discretion
or judgment. But, in much the same way that a street-
light can be used for illumination or support depend-
ing upon the need, greater understanding of the
multiplicity of ways that evidence is used within orga-
nizations can lead to better decision making.
Peter M. Tingling is founder and CEO of Octothorpe
Software Corp. Michael J. Brydon is an associate
professor of management at Simon Fraser
University. Comment on this article or contact the
authors at [email protected]
Reprint 51419.
Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010.
All rights reserved.

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Business Skills for Good: Evidence-Based Decision Making
© 2021 Walden University, LLC. 1
Program Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: Peter Drucker once said that, whenever you see a
successful business,
someone once made a courageous decision. Decisions requiring
courage may not
present themselves every day. But in your work life, you will be
called upon to make
well-informed decisions or at least to present evidence on which
others can base their
decision making.
In order to define the concept of evidence-based decision
making, we first need to
understand what evidence is. You are likely familiar with
evidence as it relates to legal
investigations or research studies. In general, evidence refers to
facts or other
documented information that support whether a proposed idea is
true or valid.
As it relates to decision making, evidence often comes from a
variety of sources, such
as academic research studies, internal company data, and

anecdotal information,
customer or stakeholder surveys or interviews, and the
professional knowledge and
expertise of specialists in a field. Whatever the source of
evidence, it is critical to
examine its relevance and validity or accuracy before it is used
to inform decision
making. Additionally, if you are responsible to gather and/or
interpret the evidence, you
must be sure to confront any biases you may have that could
influence your use of
some forms of evidence over others.
Once you have gathered the relevant evidence and determined
its accuracy, the next
step is to determine how and whether to apply critical
information from your evidence to
help you or others make a decision. Let's say your manager has
asked you to provide
your recommendations for how to handle a particular situation.
You are to come
prepared with your rationale for why you are recommending a
particular approach.
You may have an opinion about what the right course of action
is for the situation. But if
you are able to back your reasoning with facts and details from
prior experience, your
opinion is not just based on feeling, but on actual evidence and
best practices that
support your assertions. Evidence-based decision making
involves considering multiple
perspectives and multiple sources, so that a decision is never
made in isolation or
based on only one factor.
As a leader, being able to present and use evidence to support
decision making is a
critical component, not only of getting stakeholder buy-in and

achieving positive
sustainable outcomes, but also in establishing yourself as a
trusted colleague, a logical
and rational thinker, and a reliable source of information. The
more you are able to
engage in evidence-based decision making, the more you can
demonstrate your
understanding of the needs and complexities of your
organization, as well as help to
lead that organization toward positive change and improved
outcomes for good.
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2 Assignments
1st Assignments- Discussion wk3 (200 words)
Consider a decision you needed to make recently, whether it
was of little or significant importance. What was the role of
evidence in supporting this decision? Did you seek out the
evidence first to guide you toward a decision, or was your mind
already made up and you sought evidence to support your “gut
feeling”? In this Discussion, you will examine one example of a
time when you made a decision based on “evidence” and one
example of a time when you made a decision before finding the
“evidence” for support.
To prepare for this Discussion:
· First, review the following video: Video
(Transcript attached- Business Skills for Good)
· Then, review the article “Is Decision-Based Evidence Making
Necessarily Bad?”
(Article attached) Reference: Tingling, P., & Brydon,
M. (2010). Is decision-based evidence making necessarily bad?
MIT Sloan Management Review, 51(4), 71-76. Retrieved from
https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/is-decision-based-
evidence-making-necessarily-bad/docview/633072096/se-2
· Next, reflect upon your experiences related to decision
making, particularly in the workplace. Think back across these
decision-making experiences—what went well, what didn’t go
well, and any insights you gained from the experiences and/or
from watching the video. With your experiences in mind,
consider how evidence-based decision making could promote
positive social change.
·
Note: When using specific examples from your
professional experience, be sure to disguise the names of any

individuals or organizations.
Post your analysis of the impact of evidence-based decision
making on business outcomes. In your analysis, be sure to
include the following:
(200 words or more)
· Describe one professional experience in which you used
evidence as the basis for decision making and one experience in
which you made a decision and then found evidence to support
the decision you made.
· Compare both situations regarding how the use of (or lack of)
evidence impacted the outcomes of your decision making, being
specific in terms of positive and negative impacts. In your
comparison, be sure to include the risks and benefits of each
approach in terms of the outcomes.
· Based on this week’s Learning Resources and your previous
experiences as examples, identify two or more ways evidence-
based decision making can be used to promote positive social
change within and/or for an organization.
2nd Assignment – (5 paragraph Essay 300 words or more)
Examine a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advertising
campaign that promotes the influenza (flu) vaccination. Analyze
the campaign to discover the target audience and the advertising
techniques used. Then, evaluate the effectiveness of these
advertising techniques. Write a five-paragraph essay in which
you explain how the advertising campaign effectively promotes
the influenza vaccination to a range of audiences.

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