A Simple Decision Making Process

I've yet to find a Decision Making Process that can be easily adapted and applied to almost any daily situation. The military and business have detailed decision making templates in order to streamline and make each specific process easier. Neither is very flexible in assisting with decision making outside of their intended purposes. A simple process that the average person can use to quickly and accurately make good decisions would be very beneficially to people in their daily lives.

Good Judgment is the basis of all good decisions. The Marine Corps defines the leadership trait judgment as “Your ability to think about things clearly, calmly, and in an orderly fashion so that you can make good decisions”. Having a good foundation makes for a much stronger structure. Conversely, garbage in, equals garbage out. Someone with poor judgment is extremely likely to have poor decision making skills.

A simple decision making technique is something everyone, assuming they have or can be taught good judgment, can use. If it is going to be routinely used in making daily basic life decisions, it should be a “one size fits all”. A decision making template for buying a car should be just as easily used for buying a pair of jeans. If it is simple – people will use it. The below describes a three step process that could help people to make better decisions.

We are often quickly overwhelmed with options. Look at the TV options in the Sunday paper ad section. There are literally hundreds of TVs to choose from. Many people are simply overwhelmed and over powered by the volume of choices they are presented. People just don't have time and often just don't want to deal with the hassle of making a decision. In those cases they end up with something they really didn’t want, didn’t need, that didn’t fit or something they overpaid for.

The key to narrowing choices is to have a basic idea of what you want, or what you want your desired outcome to be. Knowing that you want a 40 inch, flat screen, high resolution HDTV with surround sound that costs no more than $500 begins to narrow the field fast. Taking just a few minutes to identify your desired outcome is critical. It cuts the number of options significantly (say from a hundred to twenty) and starts to make the decision making process manageable.

Now that we’ve succeeded in taking the options down to say 15 or 20 (from a hundred or more), it is time to narrow them again. This can be done relatively quickly by knowing what you don’t like or want. Having trouble? Use your intuition and gut feeling. Your goal is to narrow your options to the final three choices.

The decision making process now becomes extremely manageable with three choices. Assuming good judgment has been applied, any of the three should provide the desired outcome. Once three options are laid out, look for the worst of the three options and discard it. Most people waste a lot of time and energy attempting to find the best option. Some agonize over making the best of the three choices and tend to overwhelm or paralyze themselves. They just can’t pick the best one. Choosing the least preferable option prevents this and allows the options to be narrowed down to two very acceptable choices.

The field of choices has been narrowed from 100 down to two in a reasonably short period of time. The best option may become clear at this point. If it does, the decision is easy. Select it!

What if you still can’t distinguish between the final two options? First, determine how much time you have available. If you have 24 hours it might help to sleep on it. The best choice might become clearer in the morning. What if you only have 5 or 30 minutes? If it comes down to the final two choices and you still can’t determine the best option, you probably have two outstanding choices. The process you used to narrow the field and the fact that you can’t readily tell them apart has led you to two very good options. At this point all you need to do is flip a coin. That’s right, flip a coin and go with it. You’ve used your good decision making skills throughout this process to find the two best possible choices. Based on the decision making process used, either selection accomplishes the desired outcome. It may not be the very best decision, but you'll have made a good decision. A good decision is better than a bad or poor decision any day of the week.