I admit, at first  I wasn’t sure I had a process (decision making comes very naturally to me).  But, it occurred to me that I do in fact have a process — and I’m going to share it with you.

Step One:  Gather Information

Before you make any decision, you need to get the information you need to decide.  In the case of choosing a seat on my Southwest flight – I needed to know whether the flight was full or not so I could decide whether to take a seat where I might be stuck in the middle — or take a seat on the aisle.  The best strategy depended on how many people would eventually get on the plane.  So, I asked the stewardess — she said the plane would be pretty full.  In your business, this fact finding stage can take days (or weeks) or just minutes… The key here is to gather the information and then move on to the next step…

Step Two: Interpret the Facts Now that you have the facts you need – it is time to interpret them so you can make your decision. In the case of the airline seat, the interpretation was easy – I couldn’t count on having the seat next to me empty – so I chose my seat accordingly.  The pitfall with business decisions is that sometimes we let our decision making be clouded by doubt and fear.  Don’t let those emotions in.  Make your decision based on the facts as you see them.

Step Three: Look at the Opportunity/Options and Decide.  You’ve looked at the options – now it is time to stretch your imagination and see what choices you really have.  Now is the time to make a decision.  If you’ve done steps 1 and 2 – you should know the right choice.  Make it and start implementing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 at 10:30 am and is filed under Mindset and Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.