Orlando Massacre Might Fuel Decision Inertia

Decision Inertia, in short, is the tendency to continue to expand choices until the number of options is overwhelming and leads to indecision or poor decisions.  Knowing what has been posted by the media about the Orlando massacre, people fleeing the club was a life-preserving measure, the “gut feeling” or as author Brian Peters would probably state, “The METUS Principle” — Fear guiding decision-making.  What we will most likely see in the days and weeks ahead will be countless bills aimed at developing “better” prevention and response protocols to such events.  450 school safety bills were introduced only months following Sand Hook.  In short, we can’t prevent terrorism, we can bracket it.  What we can do is ensure that we teach people sensemaking (see Weick’s theoretical framework) and instead of publishing another thick joint-taskforce guide to safety planning, focus on improved reporting systems (identifying leakage) and helping people to counter decision inertia.