Decision making

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Name: Decision Making

Time: minimum 30 minutes

Goal or purpose of the exercise:

Quick decision exercise is used to prepare people to face crisis situations and to get them into the frame of mind in which they will think quickly under stress, focus on key issues, learn to ignore minor ones and to reach action-decisions.

How it's done/facilitator's notes

To a group no larger than 8 you give them a scenario, for example: A woman faints inside the line of a march. You are a peacekeeper. What do you do?' Allow fifteen seconds for discussion among the three or four people taking part. Afterwards, discussion with all participants. How was it that you came to a decision? what helped the process? which was the main difficulty?

A next step is to carry the exercise with spoke council. You have several small groups that count as 'affinity groups'. You give them a new scenario and each group chooses a spoke person for their group. Once each 'affinity group' has come to a decision the different spoke person meet together and work to come to a decision between them. After they reach a level of consensus each spoke person goes back to their group and consult the decision with their 'affinity group'. The group can make recommendation for changes and then all the spoke person meet again to come to a final decision that hopefully would be a decision that everyone in all of the different 'affinity groups' can live with.

Trainers notes

The major limitation: doing too many quick decision exercises, especially right before an action takes place, can establish a mind-set of emergency, thus raising tension so that people panic. Quick decision exercises should be tempered with other training experiences to prevent this perspective of imminent danger.