Decision-Making Style Assessment for Work and Personal ChoicesThere is no best way to decide. There is a price on each one.
Sixteen two-sided situations with no midpoint, eight statements, and four styles written twice — as what each gets you and what it costs.
A style profile that names the cost of your own preference
Most profiles of this kind describe you flatteringly and leave it there. That is a design choice rather than a limitation, and it is the reason so many of them read like a horoscope. This one is built the other way round: every one of the four ways of deciding is written twice, once as what it gets you and once as what it costs when it runs unchecked, because a description with no price in it cannot be wrong about anybody.
The four are drawn from the published work rather than invented. Comparing options against criteria reliably produces better outcomes and reliably lower satisfaction with them. Acting on a recognised pattern is expert judgement in a setting you have real history in, and something much less useful outside one. Deciding through other people buys information and commitment and can hand the decision away without either side noticing. Holding a decision open is sometimes the cleverest move on the board and sometimes a decision made by the calendar.
Sixteen of the exercises are two-sided: a real situation with a legitimate approach at each end, six points, and no midpoint to hide in. Half of them are worded the other way round, which is what stops a profile becoming a measure of whether you agree with statements.
Your four numbers are centred on your own average before anything is reported, so how emphatically you use a scale drops out and only the shape survives. That has a consequence the report states rather than hides: you cannot be high on all four, because the four are measured against each other. And if you press nearly the same button on every situation, no profile is drawn at all — the refusal is tested on what you actually pressed, not on the reversed values, because reverse keying will happily hand a shape to somebody who has none.
Thirteen further exercises test what you know about how decisions actually work, reported separately. Three written answers ask the one question that discriminates: can you name what your own way of deciding gives up.
What you walk away with
Your own average removed first, so scale-use drops out and what remains is the relative strength of the four — drawn as a beam either side of your own centre.
What it gets you, what it costs when it runs unchecked, and the situation it fits best. Four strengths and four costs, none of them flattering by accident.
A flat set of answers gets no profile at all, and the reason is written out. Most instruments test flatness on the wrong vector and never notice.
Thirteen keyed exercises on the research about deciding, scored against the authored priors and kept out of your profile.
Three written answers scored on one criterion only — whether you name what your own approach gives up. It discriminates far better than whether the answer is a good one.
Taken from the end of your profile that trails rather than the end that leads, naming a situation and a behaviour.
Inside your report
Illustrative sample — your report is generated from your own responses.
Your own average is removed first, so how emphatically you use a scale drops out. It also means you cannot be high on all four, and the report says so.
You widen the options and bring the people who have to act with you.
Consultation quietly becomes delegation, and the decision gets made twice.
A description with no price in it is a horoscope. Every one of the four carries its cost beside its strength.
If the same button is pressed on nearly every situation, no profile is drawn at all. Half these items are worded the other way round, so scoring that pattern would hand back a shape that came from our wording rather than from the answers.
Flatness is tested on the buttons actually pressed, not on the reversed values. Most instruments test the wrong vector and never notice.
Built for
- Anybody who wants a straight account of how they decide, and what it costs
- Managers and specialists whose work is mostly judgement calls
- Coaches and L&D teams who want a profile that names costs rather than compliments
- People choosing between two options right now and stuck in a familiar way
Find out what your own way of deciding gives up
40 exercises across six formats · about 35 minutes · a centred profile, four strengths with four costs, and a refusal where there is nothing to read.
₹649 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
No, and the report is built to make that impossible to read into. Each is written twice, once as what it gets you and once as what it costs, and the situation each fits best is named. A profile that leads on one is not a better decider; it is a person whose costs fall in a different place.
Because the four are measured against each other and your own average is removed before anything is reported. That is what makes how emphatically you use a scale drop out. It also means the profile sums to zero, and the report says so rather than letting you read four high numbers that cannot exist.
You get no profile, and a written explanation of why. A response set with no variation in it expresses no preference between four approaches, and half the items here are worded the other way round — so scoring the pattern anyway would hand you a shape that came from our wording rather than from your answers.
No. A percentile needs a real norm group with a stated size and composition, and this instrument does not have one yet. Every style carries a placement rather than a number, and the cut for a placement is printed on the page.
About thirty-five minutes for forty exercises. ₹649 in India, inclusive of GST, or US$6.99 elsewhere, one time, for the sitting and the full report.
Each one takes a single capability, puts you inside the situations where it is actually tested, and scores your choices against published evidence — with a report designed for that capability alone, not a template. They span hiring, compliance, education, operations and personal skill.
Browse the catalogue →Methodology: Forty original exercises across six formats: sixteen two-sided position items with a legitimate approach at each pole and no midpoint, eight balanced-keyed agreement statements, six match-the-following exercises, four keyed claims, three select-every-that-applies items and three written justifications. Construct statement: it measures the relative strength of four ways of reaching a decision - comparing options against criteria, acting on a recognised pattern, deciding through other people, and holding a decision open - and whether the respondent can name what their own approach gives up. It does not measure decision quality, intelligence, confidence, or whether any past decision was right, and it is not a selection instrument. Declared response instruction for the profile: behavioural tendency, what the respondent actually does. The keyed exercises carry their own instruction - knowledge - and are reported as a separate strand outside the profile, as are the three written answers. Scoring is a within-person centred style profile: each style is scored on its own balanced-keyed items, the respondent's own mean across the four is removed, and the result is reported as a shape rather than as four levels. Elevation and acquiescence drop out of a centred profile by construction, and the same construction makes high-on-everything impossible, which the report states rather than hides. Flatness is tested on the raw responses rather than on the reverse-keyed values, because reverse keying manufactures a shape for a respondent who has none; a flat profile is refused a reading. Every style carries a three-way placement rather than a number, because six items cannot support one, and no percentile is claimed anywhere because no norm group exists yet. Keying and construct definitions draw on the convergent evidence rather than one framework: Scott and Bruce on decision-making styles; Schwartz and colleagues on maximising and satisficing, and Nenkov and colleagues on its short form; Iyengar and Lepper on choice overload; Klein on recognition-primed decision making in experts; Kahneman and Klein's joint account of when intuition can be trusted; Simon on bounded rationality and satisficing; Gigerenzer on fast and frugal heuristics; Cacioppo and Petty on need for cognition; Anderson on the status quo bias and decision avoidance; Janis and Mann on defensive avoidance; Hastie and Dawes on structured comparison; and Larrick on debiasing through explicit criteria. All items are original works written for this instrument and reproduce no published scale's items or name.