To create an organization that makes high quality decisions, one first needs to understand the larger dynamics that govern decision making and decision quality. They are:
- A decision is only as good as the weakest link
- How one frames decisions matters
- One can't judge a decision by the outcome
- Decisions are linked
- One can't know everything beforehand
- People have different risk profiles
- Organizational decision making is a balancing act
- 'Two-choice dilemmas' make leaders
- Organizational decision quality must be built a step at a time
- It's not a decision until one commits.

This paper explains each of these themes in the context of one of the great case studies in organizational decision quality of the last hundred years: the journey of Ernest Shackleton and his crew to the Antarctic aboard The Endurance.