Insight and Innovation | Simple Steps to Making Better Decisions

Simple Steps to Making Better Decisions

By Matt Stanczak, Consultant

Making decisions is a basic life skill for all people. Whether you are a corporate CEO, surgeon, or stay-at-home dad, we all have to make decisions to make it through our daily routines. Most of us don't enjoy making decisions. Often our decision making is stressful and full of uncertainty. When it comes down to it, we cannot predict the outcome of our decisions. Some of our best-planned decisions might not turn out how we anticipate and, conversely, our poorest decisions sometimes work out to our benefit. While we cannot predict the outcomes of our decisions, structuring our decision-making process will allow us more control over the outcomes of our choices. In other words, a good decision maker is judged not on what he decides, but on how he decides.

Be a Proactive Decision Maker

The first step in being a better decision maker is to be more involved in the decisions that affect you most! Too often we wait until decisions are thrust upon us before we consider them. Many decisions - which house should I buy, which college should I choose for graduate school, which candidate should I hire - have long time frames, but we wait until the eleventh hour to put any careful consideration into them. By starting early and starting the decision process before the decision becomes a problem, we can place ourselves in the driver's seat as the decision progresses. Not only will your frame of mind be more positive, you will have more time to collect information and reflect on the decision.

Structure Your Decision Problem

Another major deficit in most people's decision-making skills is knowing how to structure a decision. Many of us make major life decisions without even putting a pen to paper. There are myriad decision-making systems. You need not subscribe to any particular system but using some structure in your decision-making process is critical. A few characteristics that are common to most decision-making methodologies include:

	Define your decision - This seems simple, but it is always more difficult than expected. The first step in defining a decision is to make sure that you are deciding on the correct issue. For example, when deciding on which apartment to move into, should you really be deciding on whether to rent an apartment or a house? Should you be deciding on whether to rent or buy? Make sure you're tackling the right problem before you move ahead.
	Articulate your objectives - When making a decision, make sure you're honest with yourself about what you want, need, and hope for in your decision.
	Create alternatives - Give yourself plenty of different ways to accomplish your objectives. Be creative with your alternatives - you can't choose an alternative if you haven't created it!
	Describe outcomes - Try to understand the complete consequences (good and bad) of selecting each alternative. Try not to give preference to any of your initial favorites!
	Make choices - With an understanding of the outcomes from each alternative, rank each alternative against all the others. Select the alternative with the most positive outcome. It's not that easy! Making tradeoffs and determining the best alternative can take a lot of deliberation. At least by structuring your decision, you will have a method for coming to your conclusion.

Making decisions will always be difficult. But by being a proactive decision maker and structuring your decision making process, you can make it easier on yourself to make decisions, and make it easier to explain the justification of you decision to others.

Matt Stanczak specializes in decision analysis, business modeling, and operations research at THE HILL GROUP. He can be reached at 412.343.9393 or via email at mstanczak@hillgroupinc.com.

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These materials have been prepared for educational and information purposes only. They are not consulting advice or opinions on any specific matters. Transmission of the information is not intended to create, and receipt does not constitute, a consultant-client relationship between The Hill Group, Inc. and any recipient of this material. Readers should not act upon this information without seeking professional advice.