Blog Post

Why Messages Miss — And How Decision-Making Science Can Fix Them

Oct 9

4 min read

Good ideas fail every day — not because they’re wrong, but because they’re heard through the wrong lens. You can have the right facts, the right intent, and still miss the mark if your message doesn’t match how people decide.

That’s the heart of decision-making science, and the focus of our recent Higher Business Series with Dr Juliet Bourke — one of the world’s leading researchers on cognitive diversity. Her work shows that every leader filters information through a dominant decision lens. Understanding that is the difference between being persuasive and being ignored.

It’s also the science that powers Wize Snaps — Wizer’s new AI communication tool designed to help leaders, teams, and consultants connect their messages to the way people actually think.

How Decision-Making Science Powers Wize Snaps — The Link Between Cognitive Diversity and Communication

The Science of Decision-Making Diversity

Juliet’s research identified six distinct lenses people use when making decisions:

Outcomes, Options, Risk, Evidence, People, and Process.

Each represents a way of reasoning built over time through experience and reinforcement. Most of us lead with one or two of these and overlook the rest.

Her global data revealed something striking:about 75 percent of senior leaders in Western organisations cluster around just two lenses — Outcomes and Options. That means most conversations in executive rooms focus on what success looks like and how to get there — while risk management, data, stakeholder perspectives, and process design fade into the background.

This narrowing of perspective is what we call cognitive drift — the quiet erosion of thinking diversity as people rise through an organisation. Everyone starts sounding the same, even when they don’t mean to.

When Everyone Thinks the Same Way

Dr Bourke tells the story of sitting in a leadership meeting where the whiteboard filled with ideas. Everyone nodded and prepared to vote.She asked for the evidence behind each option. A senior leader replied:

“Can’t you make a decision?”

That single line captures what happens when organisations reward one decision style over others. It’s not that people stop thinking differently — they stop speaking differently because they learn which logic gets rewarded.

And when communication becomes one-dimensional, so do decisions.

Cognitive Drift - people start to shape their decision style to match the leadership.

How Communication Mirrors Decision Style

One of Juliet’s biggest insights is that the way we decide shapes the way we communicate.

Outcome-driven people lead with goals.
Risk thinkers talk about contingencies.
Evidence thinkers share data and footnotes.
People-focused thinkers highlight impact and relationships.
Process thinkers explain the steps.

Each style is valid — until it meets someone who decides differently. Then the message falls flat, not because the idea is bad, but because the reasoning doesn’t resonate.

That’s where Wize Snaps enters the story.

Turning Research Into AI-Powered Communication

At Wizer, we’ve spent years applying decision-making science to help organisations design stronger decisions.We realised the same science could improve everyday communication.

Wize Snaps is an AI communication tool that uses these six decision lenses to help you tailor messages in real time.

Here’s how it works:

Profile – Snaps uses Wizer’s Decision Profiles or text cues to detect a person’s dominant decision lens.
Assess – It analyses your draft message and identifies mismatches. Too emotional for a Risk lens? Too vague for an Evidence lens? It tells you.
Adapt – Snaps rewrites or suggests changes so your message speaks directly to that lens — outcomes for achievers, proof for analyzers, process clarity for guardians, empathy for collaborators.

It’s not personality-based. It’s decision-based communication — the missing link between inclusion and influence.

Wize Snaps - matching Decision Profiles with outreach Communication

The Jason Bourne Test

During our live session, we ran a playful demo.We fed Wize Snaps a fictional profile: Jason Bourne — logical, data-driven, analytical. Snaps identified him as an Analyzer.

We tested a charity email written in emotional language:

“The curtain is closing on another season — help us keep the lights on.”

Snaps instantly flagged the mismatch: too abstract, no evidence, no timeline.It rewrote the message to fit Jason’s decision lens:

“Your donation enables 150 artists to create new work this season. One day left to give.”

Same goal. Completely different framing.The difference? It speaks his logic, not ours.

From Decision Science to Everyday Impact

The implications go far beyond marketing or outreach.

When you communicate in a way that aligns with how someone decides, three things happen:

Engagement increases — people feel their reasoning is respected.
Misunderstandings drop — you match their logic pattern.
Followership grows — stakeholders see their perspective reflected.

It’s inclusion made practical.

Nothing says “included” like being in the room — or the message — when a decision is made.

Designing for Decision Culture

Cognitive drift explains what happens when organisations ignore diversity of thought.Wize Snaps shows what’s possible when we design for it.

Together with Wizer’s Decision Profiles, it turns theory into daily practice:

Decision Profiles reveal how people make choices.
Panel Strength shows when a group’s mix is unbalanced.
Wize Snaps helps you communicate so those differences work for you, not against you.

That’s what we call building a decision culture — one where diversity directly improves outcomes.

The Bigger Picture

In a world where AI often makes communication more generic, Wize Snaps does the opposite. It uses AI to make communication more human — grounded in the psychology of how people decide.

It’s a small step with a big ripple effect:Leaders connect faster. Teams align quicker. And organisations keep their diversity of thought alive instead of letting it drift away.