Make the decision

Have you attended a meeting where a lot was discussed but few or no decisions were made?

Have you had a boss who never or rarely made decisions? I am sure most of you have answered yes to both of these questions. Since the start of the year, I have already attended two or three long meetings where no decisions were being made.

A couple of times at both meetings, I had to force the making of some key decisions, from the floor. Today, we will discuss the importance of making decisions and share a few tips on how to make decisions.

Making decisions has many advantages compared to not making decisions. To start with, when you make decisions, you have clarity of direction and action plan.

Often times, decisions lead to action and action leads to results, impact and progress. That is why people who make decisions tend to be more likely to be successful than those who do not take the decisions. Once the decision is made, you go to the next step where more opportunities and options emerge than if you did not make the decision.

When you make decisions, you gain a big opportunity to learn from the outcomes of the decisions you make whether good or bad. Decision makers gain a deeper understanding of life’s lessons. Even when the decisions result in a mistake, you gain by learning from that mistake and continuously become a far better person than before.

Having looked at the importance of making decisions, let us turn to the steps you need to take in order to make a decision.

Step 1: Identify the decision: The first steps is to actually know and realise that you need to make a decision. Sometimes, people do not make a decision because they simply do not know that they need to make a decision. You need to continuously teach yourself to quickly know when you need to make a decision.

Step 2: Collect relevant information: A good decision is the one that has been informed by some facts. Therefore, to make a good decision, you need to gather enough information. If you gather too little information, you will make a wrong decision. On the other hand, if you wait to have all the information, you will be late with the correct decision and therefore make no impact or change. Better make a decision that is half good in time than an accurately correct decision that is too late for effect.

Step 3: Identify the alternatives: Once you have gathered enough information and you know the problem that you are trying to make a decision on, you need to identify the options that you have for the decisions. It is only in rare circumstances that you get only one plausible decision to make. By identifying all the possible alternatives, you are putting yourself on a path towards making the best possible solution.

Step 4: Weigh the options: Once you have the alternatives or options, you need to weigh them and compare them with one another. As you do that, you need to consider for each of the options the pros and cons. The best option is the one that gives you the best chance on positive impact while minimizing the negative effects of the decision.

Step 5: Make a choice: Once you have properly weighed the options, you should now make the choice or the decision. This requires bravery and courage. It is never easy to actually choose one option but to progress on you now need to just do that. Do it!

Step 6: Take action: A decision without action has no effect. You need to resolve and take action by implementing the decision made. There is no other path to success except through implementing the actions arising from the decision made.

Step 7: Review: We already mentioned that one of the biggest advantages of making decisions is that we learn from the decisions even from the ones that have failed. You can learn such lessons by reviewing each decision you make, looking at the impact as well as the side effects or bad effects.

Rise and shine by making decisions when time calls for decisions to be made. Good luck!