How to improve decision-making?

Let’s know what’s decision-making, first. It’s the process of developing a commitment by management or authority to some course of action. Basically three things which help characterize decision-making: (1) it necessitates making a choice among two or more alternatives; (2) it is a process that typically involves more than just what was decided and (3) the ‘commitment’ which usually necessitates a commitment of resources- economic, human, and time.

Alternatively, we can say it is to view it as a process of problem solving. A problem exists when there is a perceived gap between an existing and desired state.

Step-by-steps for improving decision-making

As the managers, we must consider a lot of thing when making decisions, either individual or group. Managers’ decisions require creativity now, perhaps more than ever, as the rapid pace of change.

Here are five stages of creative thinking, which a good manager usually takes for proper decision-making-

1. Preparation: We must develop some sense of the complexities of our environment, through our daily activities and have to move along a learning curve.
2. Concentration: We should focus the specific problems which we already identified, and must contextualize as much as possible.
3. Incubation: We much approach the problems from different angles and directions as we can. We must meet the creativity in this stage and this is where brainstorming in a group really adds value.
4. Illumination: If we get a very specific idea of the problem(s), potential alternatives sometimes almost jump out at us. Otherwise, they emerge slowly, from further analysis; we really have to putt the pieces of the problem/solution mix together.
5. Verification: Yeah, it is the post problem solving stage where we have to follow up on our analysis and recommendations to ensure that they were appropriate and have indeed met planned objectives.

We as a decision-makers have to foster an environment of creativity by managing judgment heuristics, we must attempt to consider as many options as possible when making decisions, even those that are unattractive to us.