Why We "Satisfice"

How the Speed vs. Deliberation Debate Misses What's Really Happening

My new book, The Solution Trap: Why Colleges Keep Making the Same Mistakes, comes out in March 2026. It's about why college leaders keep rushing to solutions without first understanding what problems we’re trying to solve.You can pre-order it here.

Read just about any article about higher education today and you'll see the same storyline: two camps, locked in an endless battle for the heart and soul of the academy.

On one side are the "reformers" arguing that innovation is everything. Colleges, they argue, are lumbering bureaucracies that take three years to approve a new course while the world quickly changes around us. Strip away the committees. Slash the red tape. And more than anything, get better at responding to market forces like any sensible business would.

On the other side are the traditionalists. They argue that scholarly deliberation is sacred. Reformers, they say, are destroying what makes higher education valuable. You can't run a university like a business. Shared governance exists for a reason. Slow down. Think carefully. Get it right.

Every article, it seems, echoes this binary. Two philosophies at war. Choose your side.

But if you actually care about the future of higher education, I would argue that this entire debate misses the point entirely.

We need a better way to make sense of our differences.

What I Think Is Really Happening

Having observed how decisions actually get made across hundreds of institutions, I sum up what's really happening every day in just one word: pragmatism.

That's right, just people making the best decisions they can with the time, information, and mental energy they have available right then. The war for the future of higher education is largely fueled by our own cognitive limitations, regardless of what side you're on.

• The administrator demanding streamlined processes at Monday's budget meeting is usually the same person calling for extensive consultation at Wednesday's curriculum committee.

  
  

• The faculty member who spends months deliberating over a new program proposal might be the same person who rushes to approve software before a big looming budget deadline because it solves a critical teaching and learning need.

  
  

• The provost who insists on data-driven evidence for every small policy change is the same one who approves a major campus construction project based on a single architect's presentation because the donor meeting is tomorrow.

  
  

• The department chair who forms three committees to study whether to change office hours spends five minutes deciding which applicant gets the adjunct position because classes start next week.

  
  

• The dean who demands months of faculty input before revising graduation requirements will unilaterally shift budget allocations between departments when the state funding cuts are announced.

They're not philosophically inconsistent. They're just responding rationally to different pressures. And once you see this pattern, the entire speed-versus-deliberation debate starts to look like a fundamental misunderstanding of how humans actually behave.

It's Time We Started Talking About Bounded Rationality

In the 1950s, an economist named Herbert Simon studied how people actually make decisions. Classical economics, he found, claimed humans were rational actors who gathered complete information and chose the optimal solution. But Simon kept seeing something else.

We don't always optimize, nor are any of us usually consistent in our convictions in every decision we make. Instead, we "satisfice"—a word Simon coined by combining "satisfy" and "suffice." We search until we find something good enough, then we just stop looking.

This isn't irrational or even irresponsible. It's actually the most rational response to the realities of decision making because no matter how entrenched you may be in any one philosophy, we all face the same challenge:

Time is limited. Information is incomplete. Our brains are already overloaded.

By the way, for this insight, Simon won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

And here's why I think this matters: Simon's framework has taught me that worrying about speed-versus-deliberation is a distraction from the real problems at hand.

How Satisficing Really Works

Simon identified three conditions that push people to satisfice: limited time, incomplete information, and cognitive overload. Whenever any of these show up—and in higher education, they almost always do—people can't optimize. They satisfice.

But not always in the same way. Depending on which constraint feels most urgent, we satisfice differently:

Under time pressure, we satisfice toward speed.

When information feels incomplete, we satisfice toward certainty.

When complexity overwhelms, we satisfice toward familiarity.

Same people, different constraints, completely different choices. What looks like opposing philosophies is often just bounded rationality in action.

The Meeting That Proves the Point

I once sat in on a leadership meeting that captured this phenomenon perfectly. Same people, same table, three agenda items.

First: choosing a new learning management system. This platform would touch every student and faculty member, cost $200,000 annually, and shape education for years. Discussion time: twelve minutes."Anyone used these vendors before?""Yeah, EduTech at my last place.""Any problems?""Not really.""Sounds good."

Second: revising three sentences in the student handbook about late assignments. Discussion time: forty-five minutes.Debate over "may result in grade reduction" versus "will result in grade reduction." Someone suggested forming a subcommittee.

Third: implementing new state mental health requirements. Compliance deadline six weeks away. Discussion time: eight minutes."This matters. Who can take point?"The newest staff member volunteered."Great. Thanks."

Careless, then careful, then careless again—all in ninety minutes. Through Simon's lens, though, it made perfect sense.

• The LMS decision felt overwhelming—too many variables. They satisficed toward the familiar.

• The handbook edit felt manageable. With no urgency, they indulged in deliberation.

• The mental health mandate felt urgent but vague. They satisficed toward speed, just to move it off the table.

Three constraint patterns, three satisficing strategies, same pragmatic people.

The Three Satisficing Patterns

Once you see this, you start spotting these patterns everywhere in higher education:

• The Comfort of Habit: When complexity overwhelms, people default to what they've done before. Not because it's best, but because it's easiest. The same contract gets renewed. The same process gets repeated.

  
  

• The Illusion of Certainty: When information feels incomplete, the most confident voice wins. Not the most knowledgeable, the most certain. The passionate administrator, the forceful colleague, the vendor promising everything.

  
  

• The Tyranny of Now: When urgency dominates, whatever screams loudest gets attention. Not what's most important, what's most immediate. Deadlines and donors trump strategy every time.

These aren't philosophies. They're human responses to bounded rationality. Which is why efforts to "convert" traditionalists or reformers rarely work.

Why Change Strategies Fail

Most change efforts assume you need to win people over to your philosophy. Convince the traditionalists that speed matters. Show the reformers why deliberation has value.

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But there are no pure traditionalists or reformers—just people satisficing under constraints.

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I once watched a consultant spend months preaching agile decision-making. Case studies, presentations, passionate arguments about competitive advantage. Nothing changed.

Meanwhile, one faculty member quietly transformed tech adoption in days. She noticed colleagues were defaulting to familiar tools because new systems felt overwhelming. So she ran 15-minute tutorials on one feature at a time. No appeals to philosophy. Just lowering cognitive load. Adoption tripled.

Not because people changed their beliefs. Because she made better satisficing easier.

The Real Leverage Point

This reframes the challenge of change.

The most effective leaders don't fight satisficing. They design for it. They make new options feel familiar. They provide clarity without faking certainty. They align with genuine pressures instead of manufacturing urgency.

They succeed not by eliminating satisficing, but by simply satisficing better.

What This Means for You

If you want to drive change in higher education, stop debating philosophies. Stop trying to convert people to your worldview.

Instead, study the constraints shaping decisions. What pressures feel urgent? What overwhelms people? What makes one option feel doable while another feels impossible?

Then design around that.

The institutions that transform aren't the ones that settle the speed-versus-deliberation debate. They're the ones that recognize it was the wrong debate all along.

Because once you understand satisficing, you realize something powerful: change isn't about winning arguments. It's about shaping choices in the real world of limited time, incomplete information, and overwhelmed humans.

And that's not just a smarter approach. It's a more human one. Which, in the end, may be why it actually works.