There is a clear truism in George Box's 1979 statement that “all models are wrong, some models are useful.” We attempt to model reality to see how changes can affect it – hopefully for the better. But models of reality are, by their very nature, incomplete depictions and tend to be misleading. Still worse can be models and associated solutions that faithfully attempt to do justice to reality by incorporating many facets of reality into their structures. Unfortunately, a common result is an overemphasis of certain issues in decision making that, although perhaps interesting, are far less practically relevant to effective decisions than other issues that haven't been taken into account.

Ultimately, any approach to decision making is a balancing act between an appropriate accounting of relevant reality (i.e., the objectives, decision variables, and constraints as discussed in Chapter 4) and not getting bogged down in details that only obscure or mislead. When we attempt to rationalize all of the factors that might go into a decision-making process as well as possible solutions that might be practically viable, we often “satisfice,” a term used to describe making a decision about a set of alternatives that respects the limitations of human time and knowledge.

Of course, there are some decision makers who are extremely effective at coming up with quick effective solutions to otherwise complex problems, whereas others are less so.