Decision-making can often feel like navigating a labyrinth. Unravel the complexities of this process, understand the psychology behind it, and learn practical strategies to make confident, well-informed decisions that can shape your life's trajectory.
When making decisions, consider the following factors:
Uncertainty
- Many of the facts may be unknown
- Complexity
- There can be many, interrelated factors to consider
- High-risk consequences
- The impact of the decision may be significant
- Alternatives
- There may be various alternatives, each with its own set of uncertainties and consequences
- Interpersonal issues
Select the Best Solution
If one particular alternative is clearly better than the rest, your choice will be obvious
- Use a decision tree or a Paired Comparison Analysis to decide which ones should carry the most weight in your decision
- Decision Trees are also useful when choosing between different financial options
Evaluate Your Plan
Your final decision is only as good as the facts and research you used to make it
- Discuss your preliminary conclusions with important stakeholders to enable them to spot flaws, make recommendations, and support your conclusions
- Listen to your own intuition, and quietly and methodically test assumptions and decisions against your own experience
Communicate Your Decision, and Take Action
Communicate it to everyone affected by it in an engaging and inspiring way
- Get them involved in implementing the solution by discussing how and why you arrived at your decision
- If someone points out a flaw in your decision, welcome their input and review your plans accordingly
Generate Good Alternatives
The wider the options you explore, the better your final decision is likely to be.
- Generating a number of different options may seem to make your decision more complicated at first, but the act of coming up with alternatives forces you to dig deeper and look at the problem from different angles.
A Systematic Approach for Making Decisions
In real-life business situations, decisions can often fail because the best alternatives are not clear at the outset, or key factors are not considered as part of the process.
- A logical and ordered process can help you to do this by making sure that you address all of the critical elements needed for a successful outcome.
Explore Your Options
Once you have a good selection of realistic alternatives, evaluate the feasibility, risks and implications of each one.
- Risk Analysis
- Prioritize risks you identify with a Risk Impact/Probability Chart
- Consider the potential consequences of each alternative by looking at the alternatives from seven different perspectives
- Use Starbursting to think about the questions you should ask to evaluate each alternative
Group Decisions
Use Delphi Technique
- Multi-Voting
- Modified Borda Count
- Hartnett’s Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making Model
- Assign responsibility for each stage of the decision-making process with Bain’s RAPID Framework
Step 1: Create a Constructive Environment
Decisions can become complex when they involve or affect other people, so it helps to create a constructive environment in which to explore the situation and weigh up your options.
- To avoid groupthink, encourage people to contribute to the discussions, debates and analysis without any fear of the other participants rejecting their ideas.
Step 2: Investigate the Situation in Detail
Before you can begin to make a decision, you need to make sure that you fully understand your situation
- Start by considering the decision in the context of the problem it is intended to address
- Use the 5 Whys technique to determine whether the stated problem is the real issue or just a symptom of something deeper
- Root Cause Analysis to trace a problem to its origins
- Define the problem using Appreciation to extract the greatest amount of information from what you know, and Inductive Reasoning to draw sound conclusions from the facts
