Decisions must be taken on information that is incomplete, late, and partly wrong, and this is the normal condition rather than a failure.
Clausewitz's term. His conclusion is the operationally useful part: since the fog cannot be lifted, command must be organised to function within it rather than to wait for clarity.
In practice
- An incident commander acts on a picture that is twenty minutes old and partly wrong, and would still be acting on one if they waited.
- A board takes a decision on a market that has already moved, because the reporting cycle is monthly and the market is not.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- Why reasoning works the way it does