IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 44, NO.

2, SECOND QUARTER, JUNE 2016 33

A New Engineering Profession is

Emerging: Decision Coach
—STEPHEN M. BARRAGER Abstract—More than half of the decisions faced by corporate executives deal
Ph.D, Baker Street Publishing, San Francisco with expansion or investment in new and existing products, services, or
geographies. These decisions are complicated technically and
organizationally. As a result, the decisions tend to be made by teams from
multiple functions: research, engineering, marketing, sales, manufacturing,
public relations, and legal.
IEEE DOI 10.1109/EMR.2016.2568765 Strategic decision making has become a team sport. Teams need coaches to
help pick the right processes; apply the right tools; facilitate learning; and
manage projects.
This article is about an emerging profession: decision coach. The article
explains why most decision coaches will probably begin their coaching careers
as decision engineers.

Key words: Business planning, decision-making, distributed decision-making,

product development, research and development, strategic planning, systems
engineering, technology planning

I. INTRODUCTION the team approach are well known.

There is nothing as rewarding as
IN 2008, McKinsey Consulting working on a motivated, talented
team that knows what it is doing, why
surveyed over 2000 executives from
a full range of industries, regions, and it is doing it, and how it is going to
functions. The survey revealed that measure success. There is nothing
half of the strategic decisions faced as frustrating as working on a team
by the executives deal with expansion that does not know what it is doing,
or investment in new and existing why it is doing it, or how it is going to
products, services, or geographies. measure success.
See Figure 1 [1]. This includes
decisions like, Do we develop an If you have worked on strategy teams
iPad? Or, do we manufacture the you have probably seen some
iPad in the US? familiar failure modes. Lack of
experience is a common weakness.
People are good at their jobs but they
These decisions tend to be
are not good at working with a team
complicated both technically and
on a fuzzy, complicated, cross-
organizationally. The decisions are
functional effort. They are afraid to
usually made by teams. The teams
leave something out. They fail to
involve people from multiple
focus on the 20 percent of the issues
functions: research, engineering,
that impact success or failure.
marketing, sales, manufacturing,
public relations, and legal. Often the
A. Illustrative Situation Let’s take
decisions require participation by
a situation that could happen in
people from many different countries
almost any company today. Suppose
and cultural backgrounds.
the executive team in your
organization has just returned from a
Strategic decision making has one-week whirlwind tour of Silicon
become a team sport. The benefits of Valley. The executives visited Google,
34 IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 44, NO. 2, SECOND QUARTER, JUNE 2016

Facebook, HP, Intel, and Apple. They She wants a couple of people from the personal commitment of the
visited accelerators and incubators. overseas to participate. team members. Then she leaves.
They talked with venture capitalists What happens next? How does the
and professors. They are convinced What happens next might go team get from the kick-off meeting
that your company has to “get on the something like this. The team gets to a recommendation?
bus.” They want to dip into the Silicon in the same room at the same time
Valley zeitgeist. They know they have (which is a nontrivial exercise). B. Teams Need Coaches An
to do something but they do not know They get a pep talk from the CEO. experienced decision coach knows
what or how. She appoints the VP of Marketing exactly what to do in situations like
to be the team leader. The CEO this. The first step is to frame the
Your CEO has decided to form a team promises she will implement the project and then frame the problem.
to develop a “Silicon Valley Strategy.” team’s recommendations. The CEO Inappropriate framing is the root
She has selected the people from says she wants the cause of most bad decisions. The
marketing, sales, R&D, product recommendation to be based on framing should begin by creating a
development, and manufacturing. valid information and it must have one-page project vision. The vision
answers three questions: What are
Figure 1. A McKinsey survey of over 2,000 executives from the full range of we going to do? Why are we doing it?
industries, regions and functions revealed the following goals of strategic decision And, how will we know if we are
making. (In percentage of total decisions.) successful?

After the project is framed, the coach

will help the team focus on framing
the decisions. The coach knows
which framing tools are appropriate
for the situation. The choices
include issue raising, brainstorming,
frame storming, SWOTS,
competitive analysis, stakeholder
analysis, capabilities analysis, five-
forces analysis, scenarios, and then
some. As early as possible the
team will want to develop a strategy
table. This table shows the key
decisions and the choices that will
define the strategy. It might look like
Figure 2.
Figure 2. The strategy table for Silicon Valley Strategy. Using the strategy table as a
framework the coach will help the
team define alternative strategies.
For illustration, McKinsey Consulting
says there are fundamentally three
strategies for tapping into Silicon
Valley: innovation boot camps,
strategic partnerships, and big bets.
[2] Illustrative definitions of these
strategies are shown in the strategy
table, Figure 3.

This is the beginning of the process.

From framing and alternative
generation the project moves on
through analysis and synthesis
phases. In the analysis phase the
team learns what is important and
A NEW ENGINEERING PROFESSION IS EMERGING: DECISION COACH 35

what is compelling about each accepted process for making Decisions Group (SDG) in Palo Alto,
strategy. In the synthesis phase good strategic decisions. Edwards California.
ideas are combined into a hybrid Deming, the father of the quality
strategy that the team understands movement said, “If you can’t explain We need a process that balances
and believes in. what you are doing as a process advocacy and inquiry for decisions
then you don’t know what you are that are complicated technically and
Teams can muddle through and come doing.” organizationally. Advocacy is about
up with good recommendations using standing up for our interests and
whatever process they are familiar The appropriate process depends on beliefs. Advocacy is important.
with. They do it all the time. They will the complexity of the decisions we However, in solving tough problems
do it better and have more fun if they are making and who needs to be we want to balance strong advocacy
are well coached. involved. The decision space is with strong inquiry. We want to have a
defined in Figure 5. The decisions process that allows people to present
In the rest of this article I will define listed in Figure 1 are complex balanced arguments, remain open to
the role of the decision coach. I define technically and organizationally. They
what I mean by decision engineer and require a process that can deal with Figure 4. A decision coach brings four
I will share my career path from technical issues and people issues. I things to a strategic decision project.
engineer to coach. I believe that have found the Collaborative Design
decision engineering is a natural path Process to work best across the
to decision coaching. spectrum of product planning,
corporate strategy, and even public
II. ROLE OF THE DECISION policy decisions. Your organization
may have a different process for
COACH
strategic decisions.
As shown in Figure 4 decision a
coach brings four things to a project: The Collaborative Design Process
process, tools, facilitation, and project has four clearly defined phases:
management [3]. I will expand on framing, alternative generation, Figure 5. Our choice of a decision
each of these. analysis, and synthesis. See Figure 6 making process depends on the level of
[4]. This process is simple, common technical and organizational complexity.
A. Process Process is the answer sense engineering practive. It has
to the question, “How do we do been applied extensively to business
things around here?” All decisions by my former colleagues at
organizations should have a widely Stanford University and at Strategic

Figure 3. What is your Silicon Valley Strategy?

Figure 6. We use the Collaborative

Design Process when decisions are
complex technically and organizationally.
36 IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 44, NO. 2, SECOND QUARTER, JUNE 2016

alternatives, and accept constructive reach clarity of action. In other overcome a team’s tendency to use
criticism. situations it can take months and the tools they are familiar with
hundreds of hours of meetings, rather than the tools they need.
Design has become an important information collection, and computer
competitive advantage. Design is modeling.
about blending good analysis with
FACILITATION
synthesis. Steve Jobs called Perhaps the biggest coaching
synthesis, “Connecting the dots.” In TOOLS challenge is moving teams toward
practice we can usually develop The better known strategic decision mutual learning and away from pure
powerful hybrid strategies from sets of making tools are computer-based advocacy and negotiation. People
strategies that are very different models, sensitivity analysis, tend to view decision making as a
analytically. This requires a conscience scenarios, and decision trees. There contest. The objective is to win.
effort to synthesize. In other words, if are other tools that professional
we know what is good about each decision engineers use frequently. In the 1970’s Chris Argyris and David
proposed strategy then we can usually They include framing hierarchies, Scho €ne [5], interviewed many people
combine the “good” and limit the “bad.” decision diagrams, strategy tables, and they observed many groups in
Many truly innovative approaches are and expert assessment. The tools decision making situations. They
hybrid strategies that combine the most commonly used by professional discovered that there is a large
strengths of several very different analysts are listed in Figure 7. disparity between how people say we
approaches. Apple Computer, for should act and how we actually do
example, is a hybrid. The company Selecting the right tools is not act. There seems to be a universal
combines the strengths of a hardware always easy. Choosing the wrong norm, “do what I say, not what I do”
company and the strengths of a tools can waste a team’s valuable when it comes to how we think and
software company. In short, we need a time. I have watched teams struggle act in teams.
decision making process that blends with detailed accounting models that
analysis and synthesis. did not address the real issues; People say we should think and act
issues like technical success, according to a Mutual Learning
A decision coach can help executives market share, or price. Frequently model. They say the goal is to make
choose the process that is the biggest uncertainty is whether informed choices based on valid
appropriate for the situation. In some the organization is capable of information with internal commitment.
cases a well-facilitated meeting with executing the chosen strategy. An They say that the way to do this is to
the right people is all that it takes to experienced coach can help present balanced arguments, remain
open to alternatives, and accept
Figure 7. A decision coach brings a bag full of tools.
constructive criticism. See Figure 8.

What Argyris and Scho €ne observed is

quite different. Our goal is not mutual
learning. Our goal is to win. We strive
to persuade others. We defend our
positions. We tend to downplay our
weaknesses rather than accept
criticism. Rather than constructive
inquiry we seem to prefer persuasion
and lobbying. Despite our best
intentions, we end up with limited
understanding, poor decisions, and
low commitment simply because we
do not learn from each other. Argyris
and Scho €ne called this the Unilateral
Control model [4]. See Figure 9.

I have asked many classes of

graduate students if they agree that
we should think and act according to
the Mutual Learning model. They
A NEW ENGINEERING PROFESSION IS EMERGING: DECISION COACH 37

universally say yes. When the like any other complex project. How III. DECISION ENGINEERING IS
students are asked how they actually many times have you heard project THE PATH TO DECISION
think and act they point to the evaluations like these? “The project COACHING
Unilateral Control Model. It is a bit cost too much.” “It took too long,” “The
unsettling. You can run the wrong people were involved.” These The term decision engineer has been
experiment yourself. are project management issues. They with us for a long time. Decision
have little to do with the technical engineering books have been written
A well-trained, experienced decision content of the project. There is an old and decision engineering is taught in
coach can help groups move from adage that I use often, “No one cares many universities, usually under the
the Unilateral Control to Mutual how much a project costs if it is a mantel of industrial engineering,
Learning. It takes reflection, success. No one cares how little a systems engineering, management
intervention, and skilled facilitation. project costs if it is a failure.” The goal science and engineering, or decision
I personally had the pleasure of is to get a successful project at the analysis.
working with Chris Argyris and his right price. Price includes time and
colleagues in the 1990’s. I have money, and I might add, personal I believe that most future decision
used what I learned from them in stress. coaches will begin as decision
my coaching work for the last 20 engineers. Why engineers? It takes
years. It has never failed me. A decision coach will understand the a combination of technical and
tradeoffs that need to be made organizational skills to work with
among time, cost, and quality. It is not teams on decisions like those in
PROJECT MANAGEMENT possible to get a high-quality project, Figure 1. Engineers are
People forget that even a high-level for low cost, in a hurry. Tradeoffs have comfortable with the technical
strategy effort needs to be managed to be made. aspects of complex decisions. It
comes naturally. With the right
Figure 8. The Mutual Learning Model. This is how we say we should think and training and experience most
behave in decision making situations. engineers can acquire the
organizational skills.

There is an important asymmetry in

the talents that people bring to
decision making. I have never met an
engineer that thought business
school was difficult. I have never met
a non-engineer that thought
engineering was easy. It really is time
for “revenge of the nerds” in strategic
decision making.

A. What Is a Decision Engineer?

A decision engineer should have a
Figure 9. We think and act much differently than we say we should. We practice a degree in engineering or another
Unilateral Control model. technical field like physics. Decision
engineers need to have a profound
understanding of systems analysis,
applied probability, and decision
theory. This enables them to work
with systems that are complex,
dynamic, and uncertain. Structural
models are a powerful tool for
bringing groups of people together to
talk about tough decisions. Training in
system engineering disciplines is
needed to design, build, and
manipulate computer-based
mathematical models.
38 IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 44, NO. 2, SECOND QUARTER, JUNE 2016

A decision engineer is able to frame whether a complex decision is good available. Early in my engineering
complex problems, design innovative or bad. A decision engineer can stay career I was told that, “Engineering is
alternatives, do analysis, and present focused on making a good decision. the art of approximation.” Decision
the results. This knowledge comes engineers know how to help other
from training and experience. A decision engineer is guided by people assign probabilities to
norms of logic and behavior. His uncertain events and overcome
An experienced decision engineer, critical thinking skills enable him to cognitive biases. In the terms of
like an experienced lawyer or doctor, understand the distinction between Daniel Kahneman, engineers know
has the skills needed to go into new what is normative and what is how to “slow think” when it is
situations and work with diverse descriptive. Engineering is guided by appropriate [6].
groups of people. He is an agile, fast professional norms of good design:
learner. Big decisions require an efficiency, ease of use, safety, and A decision engineer is forward
understanding of a broad range of durability. looking. Decision making is about the
domains: technology, markets, future. Decision engineers are
supply-chains, economics, finance, A decision engineer is a Bayesian. If comfortable using future-oriented
and project management. They also you have to look up the term tools like expert assessments,
involve working with people from a “Bayesian,” then you are probably not scenarios, and computer-based
broad range of professions. a decision engineer—yet. Bayes’ Rule structural models.
provides a logical, theoretically sound
A decision engineer knows that a framework for updating probabilities A decision engineer is process
good outcome is not the same as a as new information is acquired. oriented. There are two fundamental
good decision. The distinction Bayes’ Rule is a central underpinning processes associated with decision
between a good decision and a good of normative decision making. making: the Decision Analysis
outcome is the essence of decision Process [10] and the Collaborative
theory. It is easy to recognize a bad Good engineers know how to Design Process. The Decision
outcome. It is hard to determine exercise judgment when data is not Analysis process is for problems that
are technically complicated but
Figure 10. People say they want to move toward the Mutual Learning Model. straightforward organizationally. The
A coach can help them get there. Decision Analysis process is
appropriate when there are only a few
stakeholders involved and they are
well aligned. The Collaborative
Design process is appropriate when
the stakes are high and many people
with diverse backgrounds and diverse
objectives are involved.

A decision engineer is comfortable

using a broad range of tools: decision
hierarchies, strategy tables, decision
diagrams, structural modeling,
sensitivity analysis, probability
Figure 11. A good coach knows how to manage strategic decision projects. assessment, and decision trees.
See Figure 7.

There may be other defining

characteristics of a decision engineer.
These are the important ones based
on my experience. I will now share
some history and my own career
path. This might help you think about
becoming a decision coach.

B. My Personal Odyssey As an
undergraduate I studied mechanical
A NEW ENGINEERING PROFESSION IS EMERGING: DECISION COACH 39

and electrical engineering at and bringing the voices of marketing allowed me to enjoy my passion for
Northwestern University. My first job and engineering into the decisions. design, technology, and engineering.
was with Honeywell Aeronautical We consulted with teams that worked I’ve had the pleasure of working with
Division in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I on the fifth-generation Corvette, the many smart, dedicated people on
worked on the Apollo Project. From new Cadillac line, the full-sized important projects. I’ve seen the world
Honeywell I went to IBM in Boulder, pickup truck, and several other and I have helped create billions of
Colorado, to work on the IBM360 vehicle lines. All of these products dollars of value. My path is typical of
computer. In 1970 I decided to study involved big, risky decisions. the path I believe many engineers
in the newly formed Engineering- can follow.
Economic Systems Department at Over time I moved from a consulting
Stanford University. role to a coaching role. In the If you want to become a decision
coaching role I helped form teams of coach then my advice is to first
I finished a Ph.D. degree in 1975 and GM professionals. I helped select the become a decision engineer. Find a
joined the Decision Analysis Group at right process; frame the decisions; place where you can learn systems
SRI International. This was the era of develop alternatives; oversee analysis, computer modeling, and
the first energy crisis. After about three modeling efforts; facilitate difficult decision analysis. Learn about
years at SRI some friends and I started meetings; resolve conflicts; help business. Look for mentors. Get
a company to develop decision develop presentations; and supervise involved in tough projects that require
support systems for electric power project management. Some of the collaboration. Read the writings of the
companies and government policy teams were drawn from around the pioneers of modern management:
makers. We developed and sold world. The Director of Corporate Drucker [11], Deming [12], Kahneman
complex models for analyzing energy Strategy and Knowledge [6], Howard [10], Argyris [5], Porter
markets and electric power systems. Development at GM, Vince Barabba, [13], Christiansen [14], and Martin
has written three books about the [15]. Learn how to keep teams
In 1989, I became a director at lessons learned [7]–[9]. focused on decisions. Learn how to
Strategic Decisions Group (SDG) a present results.
management consulting company in GM developed its own cadre of
Palo Alto, California. I was the SDG decision engineers and coaches. Decision engineering and decision
account manager for General Motors These coaches are now embedded coaching are excellent preparation for
(GM). It was a turbulent time in the throughout the company. Many taking up executive roles. As Peter
auto industry. Many important former decision coaches are now Drucker so wisely said, “Decision
strategic decisions had to be made. top-level executives. I retired from making is only one of the tasks of an
The decisions were complex, they consulting in 2000 to write and pursue executive. It usually takes but a small
involved many people, and too often public policy work in natural fraction of his time. But to make
there was a gap between what was resources and energy. decisions is the specific executive
decided and what was actually done. task.” [11].

SDG and GM developed a decision

IV. CONCLUSION
making process that worked wonders Decision coaching has been a
for breaking down organizational silos rewarding career for me. It has

REFERENCES
[1] Massimo Garbulo and Dan Lovallo, How companies make good decisions:
McKinsey Global Survey Results, January 2009, http://www.mckinsey.com/
insights/_strategy/how_companies_make_good_decisions_mckinsey_global_
survey_results
[2] Alex Kazaks and Michael Uhl, How should you tap into Silicon Valley?,
McKinsey Quarterly, September 2015, http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/
business_technology/how_should_you_tap_into_silicon_valley
[3] S.M. Barrager, A New Profession is Emerging: Decision Coach, INFORMS
Analytics Conference, Huntington Beach, California, April 2012, Available
http://www.slideshare.net/barrager/a-new-profession-is-emerging-16516243
40 IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 44, NO. 2, SECOND QUARTER, JUNE 2016

[4] S.M. Barrager, The Collaborative Design Process and Decision Engineering,
Presented at INFORMS Meeting, San Francisco, November 2014, Available
http://www.slideshare.net/barrager/informs-collaborative-design
[5] Chris Argyris and D.A. Scho €n, Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional
Effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,1974, pp. 63–136.
[6] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 2011, p. 13
[7] Vincent P. Barabba, Meeting of the Minds: Creating the Market-based
Enterprise, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1995
[8] Vincent P. Barabba, Surviving Transformation: Lessons from GM’s Surprising
Turnaround, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004
[9] Vincent P. Barabba, The Decision Loom: a Design for Interactive Decision-
making in Organizations, United Kingdom: Triarchy Press, 2011
[10] Ronald A. Howard and Ali E. Abbas, Foundations of Decision Analysis, New
York, Pearson, 2015
[11] Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive. New York: Harper & Row, 1967
[12] W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1986
[13] Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries
and Competitors, New York: The Free Press, 1980
[14] Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies
Cause Great Firms to Fail, Boston, Harvard Business School Press,
Christensen, Clayton M. 1997
[15] Roger Martin, The Design of Business, Boston: Harvard Business School
Press, 2009

Stephen M. Barrager (M’09) was born in Owatonna, Minnesota. He received a BS degree in

mechanical engineering from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, in 1964, an MS in
electrical engineering from the University of Denver, in 1968, and a Ph.D. Degree in
management science and engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, California, in 1975. He
is currently the publisher at Baker Street Publishing in San Francisco. He is the co-author of
Transactive Energy: A Sustainable Business and Regulatory Model for Electricity.

Mr. Barrager serves on the Board of Trustees of Shattuck-St. Mary’s School, in Faribault,
ologie et d’Histoire des Alpes,
Minnesota. He is the founder and President of the Institut d’Arche
in Talloires, France.