How Can One Enhance Their Decision-Making Quality

Be clear and honest about your outlooks, beliefs, preferences, opinions and prejudices and your resolutions. The purpose is not to let them affect your decision making quality. Becoming aware of an unconscious bias is the first step to making good decisions, and it can ultimately help in creating a productive work culture.

Check for Errors in Thinking

We all are illogical beings, though we don’t think so. Every person creates his own social reality. The way they view the world is completely personal because we all have subjective biases However, with practice, one can avoid some thinking errors and improve their decisions, and consequently their lives and careers.

Do You Do Enough Analysis?

Defining and figuring out what caused the problem, increases the chance of a better solution. Don’t just collect information but put it in categories that make sense. Try to analyze patterns and causes to come up with alternatives that increase decision quality.

Do a Historical Analysis

Do an objective analysis of decisions you have made in the past and their accuracy. Most of us make better decisions in some areas than others. Our decision-making skills need help in one or two limited areas, like decisions about people, about career and so on.

If You Are Hesitant to Decide, Maybe You Should Be

Imagine the consequences beforehand to see how the decision would work in real life. Researches show that the best decision may not be the first or even the second solution you think of. The good quality decisions come somewhere between the second and third decision you make. You may be hesitating because you are aware that something isn’t right.

Sleep on It

The brain works on things even when you are not thinking about them. Take a break and do something completely different and get back to the decision later. Take a good sleep and return to it in the morning. This will surely increase the decision quality.

Take Help

Authorize the decision. Sometime others may be in a better position to make the decision. Create a group, present the decision and all the information, and let the group decide. You can also set up competing groups or find a group in another organization facing a similar problem or consult history since this has happened before for sure.

Study Decision Makers

Read the biographies and autobiographies of a few people you admire and take a note of how they made decisions in their life and careers. Write down a few things they did that even you can do. For example, Churchill always slept on important decisions. Initially, he only asked questions and tried to figure out the problem. He did not share his views until later.

Go to a Model Decision Maker

If a person around you makes decisions in a manner you think you ought to, ask how he does it. Go through different decision processes and try to figure out with the person what questions he asks, and the principles being followed. See how much that person relies on advice, consults history, checks in with various clients and how he gets familiar with unknown areas.

Conclusion

Decision quality is the soundness of a decision at the time it is made. Quality is independent of outcome as a good decision can turn out good or bad When planning involves complex issues, you also need to employ your problem-solving, as well as decision-making skills. It pays to use an effective, powerful process in these situations, to improve the decision quality and to achieve consistently good results.