Step 1: Write an Open Decision Statement

The first step in effective decision-making is to take time to write an open decision statement. This forces us to think through the decision before it is made, makes it easier to get help from others, keeps us from making snap decisions, put our false assumptions on the table and allow us to learn our past written decisions.

In addition to making decision statements visible by writing them out, we also need to examine the way we write the statement. The world binary, used in computer departments, describes something that has two parts.

Binary decisions are statements such as “Accept or reject that proposal,” “Go to San Francisco or not,” “Vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on gun control,” or “Quit my job or not.” These statements may force you to make a premature comparison of only two alternatives.

To make more effective decisions, keep decision statements open for more than two alternatives.

For example, you could take the binary decision statement, “Accept or reject that proposal”, and rewrite it to give you other alternatives. If you start decision statements with words, “Select the best…” you can almost guarantee and “open” decision statement. Thus, the binary statement above can also mean, “Select the best proposal.” The second binary decision statement, “Go to San Francisco or not”, becomes “Select the best city to visit.” Now you are free to choose to go to San Francisco, New York or even New Orleans.

How would you turn “Vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on gun control,” into an open decision statement? (I am not advocating for or against gun control, but it does make a good example.) Sometimes it helps to ask the question: “Why would someone want gun control?” Note that gun control is a solution to at least two different problems – reducing crime and preventing gun accidents. As Peter Drucker said, “Trying to solve two problems with one solution very seldom works.” In this case, finding the underlying reasons for gun control allows us to examine two entirely different problems: Reduce crime and prevent gun accidents.

Rather than limiting our decision statement to only a solution, it seems far better to determine the primary problems involved and put each problem in a decision statement. This will allow us to develop a whole list of different alternative solutions for each decision statement. For example, the “reduce crime” and “prevent gun accidents” problems could generate a whole list of solutions as follows:

Note that many different alternatives are available by making the decision statements “open”.  You can still implement gun control if you wish.  But by transforming the first gun control statement into two pertinent open statements, there now are a variety of choices.