Value Alignment

Elements of Strong Decision (Part 1/5)

Values : Decisions :: Rubrics : Essays

What are the values you live by or aspire to uphold?

Your answer to this question serves as an excellent rubric to employ as you weigh options in a consequential decision. If making a choice has you compromising too much at the values-level, it's a great indicator that you’ll be fighting an uphill battle against your psychology. Maybe you stand to earn more, fit in better, or make certain people proud — but if you’re running counter to your internal belief system, you’ll pay a daily (read: unsustainable) tax called cognitive dissonance.

Something wasn’t right in my art practice. I was painting, posting, and shipping works across the country — but the joyful flame that propelled me initially was fizzling out. I’d decided to optimize for paintings sold, which amounted to making things that, to me, felt more muted, palatable, and trendy. However, in doing so, I’d compromised on a key value of mine: creative freedom. Re-committing to painting as first and foremost a means of personal expression has meant sacrificing quick sales, but has re-oriented the path in a way that makes me want to walk on forever.

I’ve seen this same principle work wonders at disambiguating next steps in corporate settings too. During my time as a product manager at Facebook, I was taught to include a set of principles in the preamble to strategy documents. Once a broader team and leadership aligned on principles, downstream decisions were much easier to settle. A particularly effective format was: "this over that." Let’s take the example: “Comprehensible over feature-rich.” This dictated that we wouldn't incorporate feature add-ons if they sacrificed people’s ability to use and understand the existing product.

I’m helping folks catalogue and apply their values to decision-making at decisionjoy.com :)