I love to draw and I love plants. So what happens when you combine both.
You get better at making decisions.
Yes, sounds funny? I’m talking about decision trees — something I learned about in my very first term at ISB, in a course called Decision Making Under Uncertainty. And once I saw it properly, I couldn’t unsee it everywhere.
A decision tree looks exactly like it sounds. You draw a branch for every choice you could make. Off each branch, you draw more branches for what could happen next — with a rough sense of how likely each outcome is, and what it’s actually worth if it happens. No slides. No frameworks with acronyms. Just a tree, growing sideways, on a page.
I didn’t expect to love this. I expected a spreadsheet. What I got instead was something closer to sketching — the same instinct I use when I’m drawing, or figuring out where a plant needs more light and where it needs to be left alone. You’re not forcing an answer. You’re laying out what’s actually there, branch by branch, until the shape of the thing tells you something you couldn’t see when it was just an opinion in your head.
Here’s why that matters more than it sounds like it should.
Most decisions in a marketing or brand meeting don’t fail because someone was wrong. They fail because two people were arguing from two completely different, unspoken pictures of what they thought was likely to happen — and neither of them ever drew the picture out loud. One person is picturing the bold version working brilliantly. The other is picturing it flopping in front of the client. Neither has said a number. Neither has discussed a probability. They’re just disagreeing, confidently, about two different trees that only exist in their own heads.
Put the tree on paper, and something shifts. You’re forced to name the branches – If we do this, what is the outcome? Suddenly the disagreement isn’t about who has better instincts. It’s about which branch is more likely to grow — and that’s a much calmer, much more honest conversation to have in your team.
I use this now for things far smaller than million-dollar deals and campaigns. Should I take this project on, given everything else on my plate this month? Should this yoga class be beginner-friendly or built for people who already move well? Even, some mornings, which plant actually needs repotting versus which one just needs me to leave it alone. The tree doesn’t give me the right answer. It just makes sure I’m looking at the real question, instead of the version of it I was arguing with myself alone without any substance.
That’s the whole idea, really. Draw it out. Look at what’s actually growing. Decide from there.
Simple. Honest. True — same as everything else I’m trying to build. So next time you are in doubt, learn how to make a decision tree. It really helps.