Effective Decision-Making Steps

Step 1: Identify the Decision

The first step in making a decision is to realise that you need to take a decision and:

• Identify and understand the nature of the decision you should take.
• Identify what the factors are considered in making the decision.
• Identify the current situation and the desired situation.

A useful way to identify the decision is thinking about the following questions:

• Do you think there is an issue that needs a decision?
• What is the current situation?
• When, where and why did the issue appear?
• Who is involved in the issue?

Example: Assume that you are a manager in HR department in an organization, so you should know that one of your responsibilities is handling the human resources and hiring new people, and you should know how your organization is growing up, what the needed resources are, when and where you will hire new people and who are involved in hiring new people.

Step 2: Gather the Relevant Information

To take appropriate decisions you should first collect all information about the decision. Gathering information helps you to make effective decisions and:

• Strengthen the situation - identify and be aware how serious the situation is.
• Knowing the size of the gap between your vision and the current situation.
• Boost your self-confidence because by the gathered information you know the current situation and know what you should do.

Example: in the previous example; you should gather all data about the employees and their job descriptions:

• How many are the current employees? Do they do all the required works or you need to hire new people?
• How many people you need to hire? Can you make a job rotation to overcome the resources issue? And how can you do that?
• What are the problems will occur if you didn’t hire new people?

Step 3: Identify and Evaluate the Alternatives

After identifying the decision and gathering the relevant information then identify the alternative options and write down the possible negative and positive outcomes for each alternative option to make your effective decision.

You can determine the alternatives by Imagination, making researches, discussions with your team or asking people who have more experiences. The following questions will help you to identify and evaluate the possible alternatives:

• What are the possible decisions?
• What are the negatives and positives for each option?
• What if the decision is delayed?
• What if the situation remains as it is?

Keep in mind that delaying the decision is an alternative option, and maintaining the current situation, as it is, is a decision.

Example: in our example there are 5 options: you can complete the following table to identify and evaluate the alternatives, and rate each alternative from (0 to 10)

Then apply the decision which has the highest rate.

Step 4: Choose Among the Alternatives and Take the Decision

Once you have identified and evaluated all possible alternatives, you are ready to select the alternative that seems to be the best for you, your team and your company.

You may choose a combination of alternatives based on the evaluation, such as: hire people, or with job rotation to overcome the resources issue.

Step 5: Execute you Decision

For effective decision-making you should put your decision into action:

• Set a plan for implementing your decision.  The plan should be clear, with specific steps and limited time to be effective.
• Execute your decision according to your plan.
• Check continually whether the implementation meets your goals. If there is any unwanted deviation, immediately adjust the plan to meet your goals.

Step 6: Evaluate the Outcomes of the Decision and Action Steps

Evaluating the decision is a very important step in effective decision-making, so the good manager should follow up on his decision and know that the decision doesn’t end at taking, but should be implemented and developed.

The good manager always evaluates his/her decision during and after implementation, and, if there is any mistake, he/she tries to correct it, maybe by modifying it or even by changing the decision.

To develop your decision-making skills, you should write down the lessons learned after implementing any decision.