SNHU presents seven steps to improve your decision-making process.
So, I need to make a decision where do I start?
Step one: identify the decision.
What's the problem or opportunity and which
decision is needed? It's important to clearly identify what it is that you
want to achieve. Identifying the decision to be made as an essential step that
paves the way for the next steps.
Step two: Gather information
So you know you have
a decision to make, now you need to learn more about the decision. To do this you
need information about the decision you want to identify what kinds of
information you need, how you will get that information and how you will use
the information. You'll review and assess the information. What you learned from
this phase will help you to learn more about the situation and hone in on
prospective alternatives
Step 3: identify prospective alternatives
For some this is a fun step because
you'll feel like you're making headway from your research to seeing patterns or
opportunities for an alternative. For others it can feel a little overwhelming
because identifying the option will lead to the next step and that is a deeper
dive into the unknowns and the potential impact. Brainstorming can be helpful in
identifying prospective alternatives,.
Step four: weigh the evidence
Using the information gathered and the identified
alternatives weigh your options. Consider the impact each alternative may
have on the outcome including opportunities, risks, people and alignment of values.
As you reflect on how each alternative may resolve the problem or
opportunity, begin to rank the alternatives. Think about the
opportunities, risks, alternatives, past experiences, people, with the best
alternative first.
Step 5: choose an alternative
You've done the research, evaluated the options and
have a solid understanding of the prospective outcomes. Now you put all of
what you know including the unknowns on the table and you decide the route
you're going to take.
Step 6: take action
Now you put principle into practice and you make the
alternative selected a reality. Choosing an alternative without action would stall
the decision-making process. Use the information you've gathered to craft the
metrics that will be used to measure and monitor action performance over a
specific time frame.
Step 7: review
The review stage is the last step of the decision-making process.
Here you will evaluate whether or not the specific outcome resolved the
problem or opportunity you identified initially. Using metrics to help measure
and monitor performance, you'll want to check to see if the outcomes have been
achieved or not within the time frame identified. If you achieve the outcome
great, you'll want to reflect upon what went right and challenges and the
lessons learned; if not, you may need to dig a little deeper regarding why the
outcome was not achieved and repeat. If the decision has not been made
favourable you may want to refer back to the previous stage of the
decision-making process; gather more information and explore other alternatives.
For more information on the decision-making process click the button on the screen