The Art of Making Decisions
Decision making is an art.
People have different ways of tackling issues and making decisions. Some take forever to make a decision, they need to know all the fact, some decide on the fly, and some can’t make up their mind. To this day Hamlet still asks “To be or not to be?” Hamlet would have been better off if he understood how decisions are made.
There are four bases on which decisions are made. There are positives and negatives with each premise.
1. Facts – Gather all the facts that you know, then weigh them, segregate them so you will have a starting point. Seeking out objective facts helps clear the way you look at situation. The problem is that facts are based on the past, the decision is a future issue.
2. Intuition – These decisions are based on gut feeling and emotions. This base is very personal and the explanation of the decision is hard to quantify. Who takes “I decided because I have a feeling….” seriously. However, don’t discount intuition.
3. Experience – This covers the past experience of the decision maker. This is relevant to the issues and a good basis for decision making, however, experience is based on the past; the decision is in the future. Another limitation is the experience is not always relevant to the current situation.
4. Policy – The policies you have enforced are extremely helpful in decision making, the limitation here is that policies are based on past experience; and existing policies don’t always fit the circumstances.
All the above are subjective. The best method is to use and combine all the above in your decision making process.
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For more information on decision making, review the following pages: