How to make great decisions at work?

Decisions, decisions, decisions! It is estimated that adults on average make more than 35000 decisions per day. Yes, 35000! And we spend excessive amounts of time, and tremendous amounts of energy, making choices between equally attractive options in everyday situations.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as choosing which shoes to wear to work or what to order when looking at a restaurant menu. Other times, we may be looking at extremely stressful and impactful decisions, for example, how to pivot a business?

But the problem is, that while all options may be seem?attractive in their own way, they are also?differently?attractive, with trade-offs that require compromises.

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For example, the decision you make at the restaurant can result in you consuming a healthy salad or a fat fuelled diet, each with their own consequences. Or the choice of shoes can be tough battle between style, comfort and utility. Tough right? Indeed!

So if these minor decisions consume our time and energy and can have impacts in long run, think about the bigger ones we need to make, for work, all the time and their impacts.

• Which strategy should we pursue and which should we kill?
• Where should we invest?
• How should you initiate that difficult conversation?
• How do you resolve a complicated customer complaint??

These questions are followed by an infinite number of other questions.

• How does that strategy impact our people?
• If I am going to have that difficult conversation, when should I do it? And how should I start?
• How much information should I share?
• How do I make a call on an issue raised by someone? And on and on.

So how can we handle decisions of all kinds more effectively??

To answer that, let's first focus on the source of pressure around decision making.

Thinking about the impacts of your decisions is the main cause of delayed decision making. You are only being human and considering the effects of your decision making on your own and other people’s lives.

Its universal truth that making better decisions leads to better results and fewer repercussions. Better decisions might also leave you with more options and flexibility. In fact, a good decision can also shut off other options but open up completely new opportunities.?

There is another reason for the pressure you feel with decision making – There is a general belief that when you make better decisions, it sends a message to everyone around that you are a person who is experienced and?learns from your mistakes. Experience is well respected and learning from your mistakes is?a crucial aspect of personal development.

This makes decision making an important aspect in your work life, and for your?personal life too. It can help you further your career and create better results from your work. Good decision-making can also help you achieve greater job and life satisfaction.

Hence the pressure!

So how can you make great decisions at work?

When important moments that require decisive action come around, it can be difficult to make the right decision without a process to do so.

1. The first method is to use habits as a way to reduce routine decision fatigue. Peter Bregman in his book '4 seconds' suggests that that if you build a habit —for example: always eat salad for lunch — then you avoid the decision entirely and you can save your decision-making energies for other things.
2. The second method referred to in Peter’s book is to use if/then thinking to routinise unpredictable choices.?For example, let’s say someone constantly interrupts you and you are not sure how to respond. The if/then rule might be:?if?the person interrupts you two times in a conversation,?then?you will say something.

So developing the right habits is important in order to make good calls in predictable and routine situations. But what can you do when you’re confronted with a tough and unpredictable decision at work with potentially larger impacts? The suggestions that follow will help you make great decisions in tough situations.

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1. Know yourself and your values – You need to really reflect and ask yourself what kind of person you are and what are your core values that you will abide by. Values are more forward-thinking than simply reactions to the immediate moment. They are attributes of the person you really want to be. For example,?integrity may be one of my values. Every day, I will try to embody that attribute in best possible way I can. And if I’m practicing integrity with my people and my clients, then I know I’m living according to my value. Money, on the other hand, may not be one of my values. Rather, money may be a thing I value, and there are many ways to get it. One way is doing the work I love with people I like with full integrity and getting paid well for it. Another way is to cunningly rip off people to better my own pay packet. Only one of those methods is compatible with my value of integrity. You see, with clarity on your own values, you could potentially eliminate a number of options that maybe in front of you against a decision. This will make making a choice much more frictionless and ensure you are much happier in the long run.?
2. Where do you imagine yourself in 1 year? I would not go by the saying that most people overestimate what they can achieve in 1 year but underestimate where they can be in 10 years. Truth is smart people and teams have a clear vision of where they see themselves in a year from now. It is in fact a SMART vision. You should not hesitate to make a plan for one year in the future, and?even five years into the future. It’s important not to get caught up only in the immediate results of your decisions. With this in mind, now think about that one decision and how evaluate how it will impact your future. Consider all aspects against where do you want to be in one year? Or in five years? And how do this difficult decision can either help you get closer or move you further away from what you want.
3. Re-visit your goals – If you haven’t got goals, then decision making can be a very ad-hoc process. Without goals, you will never know what is a good or a bad decision especially in a tough situation. That’s why you should take time to write down your 1 and 5 year goals that are realistic and align with your vision we discussed earlier. Once you have your goals clear, you can evaluate pros and cons of your decisions against a target and this will help you make your mind up. You maybe making some tough choices but it will get easier as you will know your why.
4. You’ve got to consider alternatives – The human brain has factory setting to consider 2 options…most of the time. Yes/no, black/white, right/wrong, chalk/cheese, yin/yang, this or that…you get the point. Truth is, you often have many alternatives, that if you think hard, can be considered. To quote Harvey Specter, what are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? You take the gun or you pull out a bigger one or you call their bluff or you do any of a hundred and forty six other things. So you must try to think outside the box and see if other alternatives exist. The more alternative decisions you know about, the more you can make an educated decision. On the other hand, if you only consider two options, you may miss out on another decision that would have gotten you close to your goal.
5. Mind the gap – that is your knowledge gap. Usually… People know, people don’t know and people don’t know what they don’t know. The latter hits you the most when making decisions. That’s why it’s important to take a moment and seek out what those unknown factors are. Once you figure out what you?don’t?know, you can take the necessary steps to know more. The more you know, the more you can make a good decision based on all the facts.
6. ?Data – based on what I do for a living, I am a data kind of person. Facts, figures, trends, trend lines…I consider them all. This way of looking at things provides more objectivity in matters that can become very subjective. Data is all very good but don’t get caught in analysis paralysis. In today’s world you can find a lot of objective information on the internet or through your company systems already in place. Analysing data is good to support or negate any developing theory in your mind.
7. Buy time – Simply speaking, in most cases, taking time to consider all aspects of your decisions is much better than making decisions at a fast pace. When you buy time, you are actually allowing your sub-conscious brain to do its thing. Human brain is said to be like an iceberg, with 10% conscious brain above the water line and 90% of subconscious below the water line. That’s why you may have noticed good leaders suggesting ‘lets sleep over this’. What they are actually doing is delaying decision making,for a short period of time, to step away from the situation so that they consider facts clearly or coming up with alternatives or assessing how the decision aligns with their goals and vision and let their subconscious come to help them further. I must add that buying time should not be confused with delaying decision making or procrastinating. That is indecisiveness and quite the opposite of what we are discussing here.???
8. Get inputs – With my team, I often talk about the power of mentors and mentorship. On a similar line of suggestion, you should get someone else’s perspective on your options to reduce your own cognitive bias. If that someone is experienced enough in what you maybe considering, they may even offer you other possibilities that you may have not considered yet. In any case, sense checking on your thought process is a good practice and will give you the confidence you need to pull the trigger.
9. Pull the trigger – The biggest thing in decision making is the power to pull the trigger. If you have followed the steps we have discussed above, you should be in a reasonable position of confidence to execute on your decision. However there are sometimes occasions where you have vetted all options and choices are equally attractive. In that case you will need to admit that there is not clear obvious path of progression and you will have to just decide on one option that simply feels better in light of your values. You can perhaps take a smaller step in that direction to test things. Why I say this? Because in todays fast moving world pointlessly deliberating will cost you more in productive time and you maybe risking loosing that first mover advantage. The best thing to develop your confidence is not sitting around and experiencing that forward momentum. ?

In conclusion

This is simultaneously the best and worst times for decision makers of all types. Best because of availability of more data, resources and generally improving understanding of how to mitigate one’s cognitive biases. Worst because of rapidly changing dynamics of the world we live in today and growing levels of frustration amongst the working population.

But, if you stay true to them, your good values can give you the right direction and be your guardrails, especially when making decisions in a fast-changing and uncertain world. This is why we mentioned knowing yourself and forming a clear vision which will be very helpful for maintaining alignment between values and action.?Outcomes are important, but?personal values?and?work values matter, too.

You wont get every decision right, trust me no one does. But constantly learning from any mistakes you do will give you practical experience and knowledge of application. In todays world, leaders want people who walk the talk and can bring their experience with them on the table to guide their company against making the same mistakes again.

Ultimately,?making decisions is what will make you a leader?in your place of work. And you cannot lead without being decisive. And when you’re a leader, your decisions will affect other people, not just you. Because of this, it’s important to consider all the moving pieces and potential consequences of a decision.

I hope you found this article useful! Go ahead and make that great decision.