Tips for Effective Decision Making:

People often say that they find it hard to make decisions. 

Unfortunately we all have to make decisions all the time, ranging from trivial issues like what to have for lunch, right up to life-changing decisions like where and what to study, and who to marry. 

Some people put off making decisions by endlessly searching for more information or getting other people to offer their recommendations. 

Others resort to decision-making by taking a vote, sticking a pin in a list or tossing a coin.
Effective Decision-Making

Decisions need to be capable of being implemented, whether on a personal or organisational level. You do, therefore, need to be committed to the decision personally, and be able to persuade others of its merits.

An effective decision-making process, therefore, needs to ensure that you are able to do so.
What Can Prevent Effective Decision-Making?

There are a number of problems that can prevent effective decision-making. These include:

1. Not Enough Information

If you do not have enough information, it can feel like you are making a decision without any basis.

Take some time to gather the necessary data to inform your decision, even if the timescale is very tight. If necessary, prioritise your information-gathering by identifying which information will be most important to you.

2. Too Much Information

The opposite problem, but one that is seen surprisingly often: having so much conflicting information that it is impossible to see ‘the wood for the trees’.

This is sometimes called analysis paralysis, and is also used as a tactic to delay organisational decision-making, with those involved demanding ever more information before they can decide.

This problem can often be resolved by getting everyone together to decide what information is really important and why, and by setting a clear timescale for decision-making, including an information-gathering stage.

3. Too Many People

Making decisions by committee is difficult. Everyone has their own views, and their own values. And while it’s important to know what these views are, and why and how they are important, it may be essential for one person to take responsibility for making a decision. Sometimes, any decision is better than none.

4. Vested Interests

Decision-making processes often founder under the weight of vested interests. These vested interests are often not overtly expressed, but may be a crucial blockage. Because they are not overtly expressed, it is hard to identify them clearly, and therefore address them, but it can sometimes be possible to do so by exploring them with someone outside the process, but in a similar position.

It can also help to explore the rational/intuitive aspects with all stakeholders, usually with an external facilitator to support the process.

5. Emotional Attachments

People are often very attached to the status quo. Decisions tend to involve the prospect of change, which many people find difficult.

6. No Emotional Attachment

Sometimes it’s difficult to make a decision because you just don’t care one way or the other. In this case, a structured decision-making process can often help by identifying some very real pros and cons of particular actions, that perhaps you hadn’t thought about before.

Many of these issues can be overcome by using a structured decision-making process. This will help to:

  • Reduce more complicated decisions down to simpler steps;
  • See how any decisions are arrived at; and
  • Plan decision making to meet deadlines.
Many different techniques of decision making have been developed, ranging from simple rules of thumb, to extremely complex procedures. The method used depends on the nature of the decision to be made and how complex it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Avoiding Common Managerial Mistakes:

When you first take on a management or leadership role, you will probably have to learn a number of new skills.  What is often overlooked, however, is that you also have to avoid a number of common management pitfalls.  These pitfalls often catch out new managers, but with a little careful thinking and organization, many can be avoided.  This page outlines some of the most common management mistakes, and explains how you can take action to avoid them. This knowledge should help you to become a more effective manager, and develop your skills over time.  1. Failure to Delegate  New managers—and, indeed, many established managers—fail to delegate work effectively.  The end result is that they are overworked, and their team members are underworked and bored. A sure sign of this error is a manager who is staying late in an otherwise empty office every night, often coupled with high turnover among the team.  This happens for two...
Read more

15 lessons every successful entrepreneur follows:

Here is the list out the 15 things that will make you a successful entrepreneur. Read on... Marketing cannot create entrepreneurs; it is the market that creates them by accepting the good and rejecting the bad. While there are huge number of start-ups and companies that take the leap, most of them fall short of achieving the desired success. According to a recent study done by IBM & Oxford Economics, 90 per cent of Indian start-ups fail within the first five years. Building a sustainable company is harder than most people can imagine. Entrepreneurship is defying logic, building dreams and achieving the impossible. The journey is a humbling experience even for the best ones. Setbacks are inevitable, how entrepreneurs handle them decides their fate.   The successful ones have the passion to do whatever it takes to cross the line. They put their wholehearted efforts into accomplishing things that move the world forward. While there is no magic formula to...
Read more

10 signs that your co-workers secretly hate you:

Be it taking credit for a business idea or chewing food in an irritating manner, sometimes we do not realise that we are pestering our co-workers because of these annoying behaviour. In our personal lives, it becomes really easy for us to be with our kind of people. But at the workplace, this becomes really difficult as it can create a larger problem. Doing a great job can earn you your co-workers respect but it isn't enough. You also have to be liked, or at least not actively disliked. Independent revealed some subtle signs that your co-workers secretly hate you but there can be chances that you may just be misreading their body language or tone. Here are the signs that can tell you that your co-workers secretly hate you: You are being avoided. If you pay heed to the actions of your co-worker, they can be seen avoiding you by the stairs when they see you waiting for the elevator or they wait until you return from the break ...
Read more