Decision making is about what to do, how, and why. But, it’s also about decision making approaches, about logics. Ok. Got it. So what are the key characteristics of American decision making?
Scope
Because Americans consciously break down complexity into its component parts, thus focusing on what is essential, the scope of their decisions is narrower. Americans avoid interconnecting too many decisions.
Analysis
Americans prefer gathering limited, but highly relevant, information. And doing so quickly. Breadth and depth of analysis must be justified by its value. Americans also have rigorous tools of analysis. However, they balance them with pragmatism. Americans trust their intuition.
Resources
The United States is, and always was, a country abundant in resources. Americans strive less to be economical. In what they make, in how they make it, and in how they use it. Instead, Americans value rapid resource aggregation and deployment in order to quickly take advantage of opportunities.
Time
In the American business context it is quite often better to make a suboptimal decision quickly, than to make a better decision too slow or even too late. Suboptimal decisions can be corrected. For Americans, a decision making process is almost a contradiction in terms. People, not processes, make decisions.
Risk
Because no analysis can be truly exact, and because no decision can be perfect, Americans are willing to take risks, as long as corrective measures can be taken quickly and flexibly.
