Good decision-makers are effective leaders. They think fast and do not hesitate to take action. Every organization needs decision-makers who can help organizations thrive in good times and bad. For this reason, organizations provide leaders with deliberate training in effective decision-making.
If you want to learn how to make accurate and good decisions, you are in the right place. You will know important principles and the easy-to-learn steps in decision-making. And you will have opportunities to develop your decision-making skills too.
Be a good decision maker.
Everyone makes decisions every day. We have unlimited things to do daily, we cannot do them all and few things are more important than others. So, ideally, we choose to do the more important things and cut off the less important ones.
What is a good decision-maker?
A decision maker is a person or group responsible for making important decisions based on variables, criteria and rules. A good decision-maker weighs known options against criteria and considers each action’s short and long-term consequences.
Though we all make decisions every day, we are not all good decision-makers.
Some bad decisions (like not brushing your teeth regularly) may not harm us in the short term. But you know its consequences are painful in the long term.
Procrastination is a decision. Being lazy is a decision. Choosing the bad over the good is a decision. Unfortunately, most people make bad decisions because they don’t know how to make good ones.
And the good news is that we can avoid making bad decisions. Training can help us develop excellent decision-making skills.
Yes, we can make accurate and good decisions. Every time.
What is decision-making?
Decision-making is the process of identifying the best action by eliminating the less important alternatives. Its Latin origin, decidere, means to cut off. To decide is to cut off all other options and stick to one and the best course of action.
A good illustration is Alexander The Great’s burning of boats.
Alexander the Great burned his vessels when he and his army arrived on Persian shores. By burning the boats, the great general committed his army to winning over the Persians, who greatly surpassed Alexander’s army of men.
There is no turning back. Alexander cut off that option.
You can make a deliberate, good, and accurate decision using a step-by-step process. I can teach you simple yet effective steps for making good decisions.
Good decision-making requires:
- Knowing the purpose of the decision.
- Knowing which factors are negotiable and which factors are not negotiable.
- Knowing how each option compares to the criteria.
- Identifying and assessing risks involved in each option.