Better Decision-making and More Robust Choices – Top 10 Tips

The test of a ‘good’ decision is not the outcome. Instead, consider a decision to be good if the right person took it, with the best available evidence, following a sound process. Here are ten tips to strengthen your decision-making process.

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Ten Tips for Better Decision-making

1 – History

What decisions have you and your colleagues faced in the past, which share one or more salient characteristics with this one? We tend to believe that every decision is unique, and so forget all the value of experience. Wisdom comes from learning, generalizing, and then applying to the specific.

2 – Doubt

There is always doubt: you can never be as certain as you would like. So stop pretending you have more certainty than you do have, and embrace the unknowns. Ask: ‘what if our choice were 100% wrong?’ Consider multiple scenarios for how your decision might play out, or for unknown factors.

3 – Options

More options = greater likelihood of success. But not too many… beyond around three or four and you hit Barry Schwartz’s ‘Paradox of Choice’ and find it too hard to make your decision. One option is no choice at all, two is a dilemma: yes, or no? Three is real choice.

4 – Argue

Encourage rigorous debate and argument. Track the argument, so you understand your choice and see it from different perspectives. Appoint a red team to find arguments against the prevailing view. Spot whether the argument is about the data, how it is interpreted, or about vision or values. Each of these has a different resolution… or none.

5 – Background

Do your homework and explore all the background information you can get. Examine different sources and different modes of information presentation: reports, presentations, visits, observation…

6 – Experiments

There is no better way to gather strong evidence to help with a decision, than a well-designed experiment. One experiment is worth a thousand theories and projections.

7 – Trash

It is easy to find evidence to support your favored course; confirmation bias will see to that. The scientific way is to look for the one data point that will trash your theory. If that data point is repeatable, you will find yourself on the edge of a deeper understanding and, maybe, a step further away from a potential catastrophe.

8 – Failure

Pretend you made the decision already. Now assume it went horribly wrong. Ask yourself: ‘what would have caused this failure?’ This will take you towards a new and maybe better decision – or maybe the same one with fewer implementation risks.

9 – Outsiders

Bring outsiders into your decision-making. They can deliver through three effects:

1. Being different, they think differently, they know less, and therefore ask the simple questions you have ignored.
2. Difference also creates a distinct point of view and new insights.
3. They are objective, and therefore will care more about the decision than about egos and relationships.

10 – Listen

Don’t contribute to the discussion. Let others do that and focus on listening hard to what they are saying. Turn off your filters of right and wrong and soak up the facts and insights. Challenge everything to force a robust assessment of each component and fact. As soon as the decision-maker lets their opinion out, you will influence everything that follows, and therefore compromise your chance to hear all the truths.

Recommended Videos to Help with our Decision-making

Carefully curated video recommendations for you:

• 5 Project Governance Tips | Video
• What is Design Thinking? Human-centered Problem-solving | Video
• Two Approaches to Solving Project Problems | Video
• Self Control: The Top 10 Ways to Resist Impulses, Control Your Choices and be More Mindful | Video
• What is the Delphi Method? And How to Use the Delphi Method | Video
• Solving Problems in the Gray Areas of Projects
• You are Your Choices | Bite Sized Project Management Thought from Seneca

Recommended Articles to Help with our Decision-making

• The Essential Guide to Robust Project Decision Making
• How to Get Rapid Decision Making to Work in Your Projects
• What has Project Governance Ever Done for Us? [Ans: A Lot]
• Problem Solving: A Systematic Approach

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