Decision Guidelines

Decision-Making - Guidelines

Practical Guidelines for Decision-Making

The following guidelines will serve you well as you strive make decisions:

1. You are the product of all the decisions you have made in your life. If you want things to be different, then you need to make some new, different choices.

2. You always have a choice…many choices.

3. Spend time in decision making in proportion to the importance of the decision. If others are affected by the decision, then let them participate. The people who participate in the decision support the decision.

4. The clearer your values, the easier the decision. You are ready to make a decision when the decision is obvious.

5. Making a decision means giving up something in return…the status quo. Opportunity cost is the value of the next best choice that must be sacrificed to exercise the decision made.

6. Every decision has long-term consequences. One decision leads to another.

7. A good decision is based on a good process. Sufficient information plus logical decision-rules makes for a good decision.

8. Always have a default option incase you have trouble making a decision. Often, the default option is the status quo.

9. To make a good choice, create many choices to choose from.

10. Every decision requires action to be implemented. Express doubt and hesitation before making the decision, exhibit optimism and initiative after.

Additional decision-making rules can be found in the following website: http://www.liraz.com/tdecision.htm
Some of my favorites decision-making rules on this website are these three:

"Choosing the right alternative at the wrong time is not any better than the wrong alternative at the right time, so make the decision while you still have time." Some decisions have time limits and once the time is up, the option of making that particular decision expires or in other words...the ships has sailed.
"Recognize that you cannot know with 100% certainty that your decision is correct because the actions to implement it are to take place in the future." A decision is an intention to pursue a particular course of action. All decisions require an action plan to implement them. All actions occur in the future, and the future is uncertain. When the future eventually arrives and if you are not getting the results you expected from your decision, all is not lost. You an take corrective actions as appropriate. This rule links to another one from that website. "Trust yourself to make a decision and then to be able to field the consequences appropriately."
"As part of your decision making process, always consider how the decision is to be implemented." Making the decision is the easy part. Implementing the decision is the hard part. Decisions fail because of problems with execution. The saving grace is that a good plan can get the implementation started in the right direction and constant vigilance to problems and timely corrective actions can get the decision back on track.

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