The New Book “Decision Master” Introduction Chapter 5 Decision Maturity

Making decision is one of the most significant tasks for leaders, managers and digital professionals today. There are many variables in complex decision making, there are tradeoffs you have to leverage, and there is no magic formula to follow. So, what are some effective decision-making mentalities, which tools should you apply, and what processes are necessary to improve decision maturity and achieve decision-making excellence?

Decision power is a mind-power: The decision-maker must have enough knowledge to make their decisions rich in information and significantly different from the available data. Decisions are based on information and generate information. Thus, a decisive mindset is information enriched and knowledge empowered. There are two types of confidence in a decisive mind for making effective decisions. Confidence in relation to statistical estimates is a quantification of the uncertainty remaining following measurement. Confidence in gut feeling is a psychological sense of certainty in the face of unquantified uncertainty. Hence, decision power is a mind-power; it guides what to select from available choices, how to accommodate constraints, how to avoid distractions, and where to show firmness and flexibility.
Apply creativity in decision-making: The very purpose of decision-making is to solve problems large or small. There is as much creative thinking that goes into problem identification as solution discovering. Brainstorming helps problem identification to avoid “worrying about the wrong thing” symptom. Framing the right question more often needs to step back, or get out of the box, in order to look at the problem from the different angle or understand the issues holistically via multi-disciplinary lenses. Always encourage critical and creative thinking at every level of your company. Any problem is the right problem if there is an attempt to find a solution. It is also important to applying creativity in a recursive way to the creative process for both problem identification and problem-solving, also learning from others’ failures, and break down the large problem into the small problems, in order to solve them in an iterative creative way.
The good decision making should consider both effectiveness and efficiency: Effectiveness is about doing the right things. Efficiency is about doing things right. The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is important to an understanding of decision maturity. There is too often a tendency to take a one-size-fits-all approach to decision making; it includes a linear and static decision-making scenario which commits to a singular path. Decision-making today needs to take a systematic approach, consider and compare the advantages and disadvantages of all options, and select the best option, and avoid vagueness or indecisiveness.
Decision-making is both art and science. Decision wisdom is multidimensional, and decision-making takes a multidisciplinary approach, frame the right questions before answering them. There is no one size fits all magical formula for decision-making. But is is the process which can be managed effectively, and it is the capability that can be developed ultimately.

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