You Can Improve Your Decision-Making Skills! (Part 2)

The first step to making an effective decision is to create a constructive environment. To create a constructive environment for successful decision making, we need to do the following:

1. Establish the objective or goal – We need to define what we want to achieve. There must be clarity in terms of the end outcome that we want to achieve.

2. Agree on the process – We need to know how the final decision will be made in particular who are the stakeholders that would be involved in this process. Would be it a shared process or determined by one final individual?

3. Involve the right people – We need to ensure that we have consulted all the stakeholders even if the final decision is to be made by a single individual.

4. Allow opinions to be heard – We must encourage and allow the various stakeholders to contribute to the discussions, debates, and analysis without any fear of rejection from the group. This is one of the best ways to avoid groupthink. We must also recognize that the objective is to make the best decision under the existing circumstances and constraints. It is not about siding anyone to get a preferred decision being made or adopted.

5. Ask the right question – We need to ask questions to elicit what is really the true issue. The 5 Whys technique is a classic tool that can helps us identify the real underlying problem that we face.

6. Use innovation tools – The basis of creativity is to think from a different perspective. The use of innovation tool will allow us to practice divergent thinking and generate alternatives while we deal with the issue. This is particularly important since the generation of new ideas will help create new connections, break old thought patterns, and consider new perspectives.