The Smart Decision Toolkit Overview, Relevance & Advantages – Understanding the Mystery Behind this Golden Decision & Cognitive Development Resource!

Toolkit Overview?—?The Smart Decision Toolkit which is also known as The Fundamental Congruence Checklist is a versatile and structured approach to thinking and decision-making.

It consists of ten questions which are designed to help individuals to critically think about various aspects of whatever they are dealing with. This ensures that the most relevant factors are always considered towards taking informed action.

The Relevance/Significance of Questions on the Checklist

The Smart Decision Toolkit seeks to sharpen your thinking and decision-making abilities through answering ten questions on the checklist, each of which has its relative importance and significance as shown below:

First three questions: 1) What is this thing? Who is this person? 2) What does he/she/it do and how??—?What are the key result areas or objectives, and how are they accomplished? 3) Why does he/she/it do so??—?Why are those the key result areas, objectives or purpose?

These three questions focus on clarity of the subject matter by shedding light on the definition, purpose and processes associated with whatever you are dealing with. The focus on these three issues helps with assurance/confidence on the fact that whoever is making a certain decision is doing so on a subject that he/she clearly understands.

Question 4): What happens if he/she/it does not perform as expected?

This question enables you to be pro-active. It helps the decision maker to be open-minded enough to understand that despite good intentions, expectations may not be met, and some missions may fail. As such, the mind should be prepared from the beginning to be responsive and accountable to such failures, i.e. come up with Plan B or even C. You must know what to do if things don’t go as planned. This is critically important when it comes to policy, systems or component design.

Question 5, 6 and 7): 5) What position does he/she/it occupy in my life or business? Where is this thing or person situated in the whole matrix of life? 6) Why is he/she/it considered worthy to occupy that space??—?Why is he/she/it situated there? 7) What happens if he/she/it is completely removed or shifted from that position or space?

The fifth, sixth and seventh questions on the checklist address the ‘Pareto Element’ in that they deal with essence and relevance as a way of evaluating the worthiness of consideration, adoption, and implementation of anything on any subject matter.

These three questions focus on the assessment of importance. When you answer these questions, you will be able to understand if whatever you are dealing with is worth your time, money, energy and resources.

Question 8): Who/What is in charge of him/her/it and why??—?Who/what makes he/she/it work as planned and why is that the best option?

This question seeks to identify a person/group of people or an element responsible for the successful implementation of a decision/resolution. This shows us individuals, or something which is tasked with making sure that everything goes as planned (oversight).

Question 9 and 10: 9) How is his/her/its effectiveness assessed??—?How do I or other people know if he/she/it is effective or not? 10) What happens if he/she/it is effective or not?—?What are the related consequences?

The nineth and tenth questions seek to address the issue of effectiveness, results, and impact, since resolutions that are adopted without clarity on outcomes are very costly in terms of time, energy, money, and other resources.

Advantages of The Smart Decision Toolkit

1. Promotes Mental/Cognitive Development?—?The Smart Decision Toolkit helps to promote cognitive development and address cognitive limitations. Attending to its ten questions stirs your imagination, enhances your focus, stimulates your reasoning, improves your judgment, polishes your problem-solving skills and makes it easy for you to communicate confidently.

This toolkit encourages deep thinking and informed decision-making. It aligns perfectly with the definitions of cognition and cognitive development provided by the University of Cambridge and the American Psychological Association (APA) as shown below:

University of Cambridge: “Thinking, also known as ‘cognition’, refers to the ability to process information, hold attention, store and retrieve memories and select appropriate responses and actions.”

APA: “Cognition includes all forms of knowing and awareness, such as perceiving, conceiving, remembering, reasoning, judging, imagining, and problem solving.”

2. Promotes Mental Health and aids in administering Psychotherapy?—?The American Psychological Association describes mental health as a state of mind characterized by emotional well-being, good behavioral adjustment, relative freedom from anxiety and disabling symptoms, and a capacity to establish constructive relationships and cope with the ordinary demands and stresses of life.

It also describes Psychotherapy as any psychological service provided by a trained professional that primarily uses forms of communication and interaction to assess, diagnose, and treat dysfunctional emotional reactions, ways of thinking, and behavior patterns.

The Smart Decision Toolkit’s ten question checklist activates a profound way of thinking and ushers a noble approach to decision making which triggers and promotes beneficial brain activity.

The same ten questions on the congruence checklist helps you to manage and spread the mind’s intensity of focus to several important issues thus potentially increasing the chances of addressing Emotional Dysregulation.

3. Easy, Simple, Flexible and User Friendly?—?It’s simple and very easy to use. It can be adopted and applied by anyone regardless of their gender, education, profession or religion. As such, it’s advisable to also help kids to master it?—?the earlier the better. The toolkit’s ten questions are clear, concise, and logically sequenced, thus guiding users through a structured thought process. It helps to breakdown complex scenarios into perceivable realities. You can also choose to instantly focus on all the questions at once, or you can merely focus on questions that are immediately relevant to the prevailing circumstances depending on your understanding of the subject matter

4. Multiple Scenario Application?—?It is adaptable to different scenarios since it can be applied to a wide range of situations, from personal decisions to corporate engagements. Its versatility is one of its most compelling features since any person or situation can make use of this toolkit. This toolkit can be applied in both formal and informal set-ups. You can use it at work with colleagues or at home with friends and family. It is applicable across a wide range of scenarios?—?personal, professional, educational, and organizational. Its universal design allows users to adapt it to diverse decision-making contexts.

5. Comprehensive Information (Data) Processing?—?The toolkit’s ten questions guide users to carefully generate, deeply analyse and intelligently process information from multiple angles. It probes almost everything in an attempt to leave no stone un-turned. It stretches wide and far, as well as high and deep. This ensures that individuals are actively interacting with the information they encounter, thus enhancing their ability to process and understand both simple and complex data.

6. Objectivity and Open-Mindedness?—?Various questions on this checklist helps to stimulate critical reasoning and aids to improve your judgment. It reduces or eliminates the dangers associated with emotive and ignorant decisions. When using The Smart Decision Toolkit, you are made to evaluate the rationale behind actions and predict outcomes and thus honing your reasoning skills.

7. Enhances Problem Solving Skills?—?It helps you to consider the broader context of the matter at hand, and the consequences of decisions. It enables individuals to proactively respond to opportunities and threats. Problem-solving skills are developed and refined as users work through questions that require identifying problems/solutions, as well as impact assessment.

8. Improves Communication Skills?—?By understanding the intricacies of a subject and the dynamics of a decision, users can communicate their thoughts more effectively. Its structured analysis approach leads to better communication, as it makes it easier for users to explain their reasoning and conclusions with confidence. This also results in better interpersonal relationships and promotes results-oriented collaborative efforts.

9. Boosts Imagination?—?The toolkit encourages users to imagine different scenarios and their potential impacts, thus fostering creative thinking. Notably, Questions 4, 7 and 10 on the Congruence Checklist predominantly triggers your mind/brain to fly around as it tries to have a glimpse of a mental picture of various possibilities that can result from adopting a certain stance or resolution.

10. Results Oriented Thinking and Decision Resource?—?The Smart Decision Toolkit places a significant focus on outcomes, and this helps you make smarter decisions, whether its in relationships, finances or health etc. It also makes it easy for you to take informed action which reduces or eliminates financial and emotional losses.

11. The Anchor of Other Decision Tools?—?The Smart Decision Toolkit helps you to better understand, and to also effectively utilise many of the most widely used decision tools across the world such as The Eisenhower Matrix, SWOT Analysis and The Pareto Principle etc.

You can adopt and use the Smart Decision Toolkit as an assessment and evaluation mechanism to determine the urgency or importance of the options under consideration when using The Eisenhower Matrix.

The Smart Decision Toolkit can also assist you to identify, assess and evaluate your Strength and Weaknesses as well as to sniff for Opportunities and Threats associated with a certain pursuit or engagement when using SWOT Analysis and The Blue Ocean Strategy.

This also applies to the Pareto Principle and many other decision tools that you may choose to use.