Life is full of choices. Some are easy, such as what to have for dinner, and others are more serious, such as choosing a career or starting a new business. Regardless of how important a decision is, good decision-making skills are useful in life, especially if you feel indecisive about something and it’s getting you down.
People make decisions every day from the trivial to the critical, such as changing careers, launching a business or making a large purchase. But how good are our decisions? According to research by Dan Ariely, discussed in Predictably Irrational, we are predisposed to making irrational choices. The reason is that, at some point, instead of following sound logic, we embrace our instincts and impulses. We often fail to consider all facts, and we are influenced by our biases.
Decision-making is the act of making choices through the assessment of information. Some decisions are so simple that you’re barely aware you’re making them, while others are time-consuming, high risk and can leave you feeling anxious. Decisions can make or break a project or an entire business. And they often involve complex and unpredictable interpersonal issues too.
Effective decision-making is a valuable skill. Having the ability to make a well-informed decision can help you become more productive, because it can save time and help you make better use of resources. In this article, we explore the definition of decision-making and how to improve your decision-making skills.
Improving your decision-making skills
People make decisions throughout their day, most of which are straightforward and don’t require much thought. However, when situations are more complicated and have longer-term impacts, it’s easy to feel unsure or hesitant.
When faced with a tough decision, it’s common to feel overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, wound up, pressured, confused, distracted and/or tired. Because indecision can have a negative impact on how you’re feeling, it’s important to learn strategies for making positive decisions in tough situations. While you may not be able to guarantee the outcome of a decision before you make it, at least you can know that you have put a lot of careful thought into it.
Here are a few tips to help you:
TIP 1: Don’t let stress get the better of you.
It’s easy to feel stressed and anxious when you’re facing a tough choice. You might tend to rush your decisions without thinking them through, or you avoid deciding at all because the stress has put you off your game. If you’re feeling anxious about a decision, try to manage your stress so that it doesn’t cloud your thinking. Go for a walk on the beach. Hit up a yoga class or hang out with friends.
TIP 2: Give yourself some time (if possible).
It’s hard to think clearly under pressure, and sometimes your first idea isn’t always your best one. Give yourself the chance to sit on a problem for a while so that you can process your options and feel confident about the course of action you choose.
TIP 3: Weigh the pros and cons.
When faced with a big decision, sometimes we lose sight of the big picture. Write a list of pros and cons for each course of action and then compare them. Sometimes the cons aren’t nearly as bad as we imagine them to be, or the pros might make your options more obvious.
TIP 4: Think about your goals and values.
It’s important to be true to ourselves and what we value in life. When you factor into a decision the things that are important to you, the best option might become obvious. At any rate, you’re more likely to end up with an outcome you’re happy with.
TIP 5: Consider all the possibilities.
Deciding can result in several different outcomes, but not all of them may be obvious. When considering each option, don’t just list the positives and negatives; write down any likely consequences.
TIP 6: Talk about it.
It can be helpful to get another person’s perspective on your issue, particularly if they’ve faced a similar decision in their own life.
TIP 7: Plan how you’ll tell others.
If you think someone may have a bad response to your decision, think through what their reaction is likely to be. Put yourself in their shoes to help you think of a good way to manage the situation.
TIP 8: Rethink your options.
If you’re up against a lot of pressure over a decision, or there are some new factors to consider, look at your options again. You might decide that your original decision is still the best one but give yourself the option of changing course. If a decision no longer feels right for you, go through these steps again to figure out a better solution.
A seven-step decision-making approach
To avoid making a bad decision, you need to bring a range of decision-making skills together in a logical and ordered process. The following seven-step approach will ensure that you make a good decision in a complex situation, but it may be unnecessarily complicated for small or simple decisions. In these cases, jump to step 5.
Step 1: Investigate the situation in detail
Decisions often fail because key factors are missed or ignored from the outset. So, before you can decide you need to fully understand your situation. Start by considering the decision in the context of the problem it is intended to address. You need to determine whether the stated problem is the real issue, or just a symptom of something deeper.
Look beyond the obvious. It may be that your objective can be approached in isolation, but it’s more likely that there are several interrelated factors to consider. Changes made in one department, for example, could have knock-on effects elsewhere, making the change counterproductive.
Investigative tools:
- Five why’s.
- Root cause analysis.
- Six thinking hats.
Step 2: Create a constructive environment for your decision
Can you give your decision the attention it needs? Spend some time preparing yourself before diving into the facts and figures. Remember that most decisions will affect other people too, so it helps to create a constructive environment in which you can explore the situation together and gain support.
This is especially true when you must rely on other people to implement a decision that you’re responsible for. You’ll need to identify who to include in the process and who will be part of any final decision-making group, which will ideally comprise just five to seven people.
Collaboration tools:
- Personal preparation for great decision-making.
- Vroom-Yetton decision model.
- Constructive controversy.
Step 3: Generate good alternatives to decide between
The wider the options you explore, the better your final decision is likely to be. Generating several 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 to look at the problem from different angles. This is when it can be helpful to employ a variety of creative thinking techniques. These can help you to step outside your normal patterns of thinking and come up with some truly innovative solutions.
Creativity tools:
- Crawford slip-writing technique.
- Reframing matrix.
- Appreciative inquiry.
Step 4: Explore your options
When you’re satisfied that you have a good selection of realistic alternatives, it’s time to evaluate the feasibility, risks and implications of each one. Almost every decision involves some degree of risk. You’ll need a structured approach for assessing threats and evaluating the probability of adverse events occurring – and what they might cost to manage. You’ll also want to examine the ethical impact of each option, and how that might sit with your personal and organisational values. The resources below offer tried-and-true models to help you.
Analysis tools:
- Futures wheel.
- Quantitative pros and cons.
- Cost-benefit analysis.
Step 5: Select the best solution
Once you’ve evaluated the alternatives, the next step is to make your decision. If you have various criteria to consider, use a decision-matrix analysis to compare them reliably and rigorously. Or, if you want to determine which ones should carry the most weight in your decision, conduct a paired comparison analysis.
Decision-making tools:
- Decision-matrix analysis.
- Paired comparison analysis.
- Delphi technique.
Step 6: Evaluate your plan
After all the effort and hard work you’ve invested in evaluating and selecting alternatives, it can be tempting to forge ahead at this stage. But now, more than ever, is the time to “sense check” your decision. After all, hindsight is great for identifying why things have gone wrong, but it’s far better to prevent mistakes from happening in the first place!
Before you start to implement your decision, take a long, dispassionate look at it to be sure that you have been thorough, and that common errors haven’t crept into the process.
Your final decision is only as good as the facts and research you used to make it. Make sure that your information is trustworthy, and that you’ve done your best not to ‘cherry pick’ data. This will help you to avoid confirmation bias, a common psychological bias in decision-making. Listen to your own intuition too, and quietly and methodically test assumptions and decisions against your own experience. If you have any doubts, examine them thoroughly to work out what is troubling you.
Evaluation tools:
- Avoiding psychological bias in decision-making.
- Blindspot analysis.
- Ladder of inference.
Step 7: Communicate your decision
and act
Once you’ve made your decision, you need to communicate it to everyone affected by it in an engaging, informative and inspiring way. Get them involved in implementing the solution by discussing how and why you arrived at your decision. The more information you provide about risks and projected benefits, the more likely people will be to support it.
If people point out a flaw in your process as a result, have the humility to welcome their input and review your plans appropriately – it’s much better to do this now, cheaply, than having to do it expensively (and embarrassingly) if your plans have failed.
Summary
We all must make many decisions throughout our daily lives. Some of these decisions require little effort, while others require more time and deeper thought before coming to a final solution. A significant part of decision-making skills is understanding and knowing a simple technique, and regularly practising that technique. If you follow these steps, you will be well on your way to make good decisions for yourself.
Coach Owl is Dennis Coetzee, group manager of the Human Capital Department at NWK. He is also an international laugh coach, who will be sharing tips with producers to develop their resilience and improve their farming operations.