Life, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t always simple. All sorts of decision-making confronts us everyday – from the big and life-changing to the small and mundane.
Making these major decisions requires courage. Courage requires the ability to face your fears and take action despite them. Fear is a natural, a necessary feeling, and is often useful in decision-making to give us a natural, necessary caution.
When making decisions, keep the following in mind:
- Set goals– The idea of setting a goal is that the decision- maker takes stock in his or her plans for the future, with his or her principles and values and priorities. The decision- maker needs to be able to answer, What am I trying to accomplish? That answer is the decision-maker’s goal and that will influence the decision making process.
- Gather information– Before making a decision gather information. because our decision making is complex. So you want to know the various options available to you. Ask yourself questions. Who is affected in each option, and how? Do the effects change over time? Will taking or not taking a particular course of action close off other options?
- Decision structuring-if there is a great number of options and numerous points, you must learn how to pull together all your information. Determine a way to manage the information.
- Making a final choice– after gathering all the information, the decision maker needs to make a selection from the final set of options.
- Evaluating– a helpful last phase of decision -making (which is probably always omitted) is evaluation of the entire process. What went well about the process? What didn’t go so well? The aim here is to reflect and identify the areas of the process that can stand improvement as well as those that ought to be used again in the future.
Every problem hides an opportunity so powerful it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories are told of people who recognized a problem and reversed it into an opportunity.
Only you can change your life. Only you can see the opportunity. Whether you’re the head of a Fortune 500 company, a government agency, or an everyday household, you constantly make decisions important to you and those immediately around you. You have the ability to learn from your mistakes, be able to approach and weigh individual choices more effectively, and start making smarter decisions-today.
Of Lolly’s many awards and accolades, Lolly was designated a Top-50 Leadership and Management Expert by Inc. magazine. Huffington Post honored Lolly with the title of The Most Inspiring Woman in the World. Her writing has appeared in HBR, Inc.com, Fast Company (Ask The Expert), Huffington Post, and Psychology Today, and others. Her newest book, The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness has become a national bestseller.