From data and measures to meaningful decisions: Designing useful information for senior managers and boards

Analytical approaches to organizational decisionmaking, with their heavy reliance on data, measures and increasingly sophisticated IT, work well for solving tame problems, but not for the wicked problems which increasingly confront organizational and government decision-makers. An alternative approach, drawing on the ancient tradition of rhetoric and focusing on the way that meaning is constructed and communicated, opens up new horizons for enabling decision-makers to overcome the problem of information overload and make good decisions. Applying this approach opens up new opportunities for information design to play a crucial role in organizational decision-making.