A Structured Approach to Decision Making
What do you usually do when you are faced with a very important decision to make? Do you typically spend a good amount of time analyzing the overall situation, make the decision, and yet you feel that you are not sure about making a good move. Or, do you decide right away and eventually feel that you are not comfortable in making the right choice?
A lot of decision making tasks are usually done by taking a really quick glance at a particular part of all the relevant factors and alternatives. Most of the time, we depend on gut instinct and emotion, and end up making a decision after a “spur of the moment” deliberation. Most of our day to day decision making processes works in this way.
As a matter of fact, if we consider every decision at length, life will come to a temporary stop, and we might not get anything done at all.
Decision Making Skills – The Concept behind It
Snap decisions were extremely important for the earlier humans. Our gut instinct coupled with the innate decision making capability is often dependent on the fact that we often had to make a decision and instantly act, or else we hurt ourselves, get injured, or even die. On the other hand, in our modern world, all decisions that we face are not so much on the life and death situations. A lot of decisions, especially those that are considered complicated or momentous, often benefit coming from a structured, slower, and thorough process.
Our capability to perform innate decision making has the tendency to impede our natural capability to arrive at a decision in which we need to consider carefully a lot of options, choices, and factors. This is where it is indispensable to consider a structured approach in decision making. This type of approach enables you to take into consideration several perspectives, alternatives as well as factors, helping put the impact of your emotional side into good perspective. The result is either a confirmation on your gut feeling, thus giving you confidence as you makes your decision, or it can also open your mind towards accepting other approaches and alternatives.
Structured Approach
The first thing that you need to do is to state your objective, afterward, following with your alternatives. What or who will typically influence your decision. For each of the options, consider the pros and cons. If you notice that the obvious result is not clear, you may do a deeper analysis. You may even rank your choices in order to get the best value in the end. This can be applied, both in your individual decision making or that of a group.