When you face a big decision whose outcome may significantly impact your business or life, what steps do you take, what routine do you follow, to help yourself do the right thing? Big decisions, especially, involve consequences and their after-effect can reverberate over the long-term. The decisions you make, delay, or avoid shape the path of your personal and/or professional life and for that reason, the ability to make effective decisions is a survival skill.

Business owners and leaders are called upon to make many decisions; most are routine, and some are high stakes, positioned to have significant impact on the direction and/or fate of the venture. It is therefore worthwhile to do whatever possible to develop skills and practices that support your decision-making proficiency. Below are practices that, unlike the whims of fortune, are within your control and can guide you along the path to decision-making success.

1. See the big picture

As you get ready to make the decision, be clear about what you expect the preferred outcome will mean for you and/or the business. Good decisions require awareness; the decision-making process fares best when you are attentive to the context in which it will be made, meaning key internal and external factors that can assist or impede your ability to choose the right path. Influencing factors are likely to include the competitive and economic climate in which your venture operates and in larger organizations, the level of support that stakeholders have for the initiative you are trying to advance.

2. Review desired outcomes

“Begin with the end in mind,” advises Stephen Covey, author of the phenomenal bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989). Your decision-making process has a better chance of seeing a happy ending when the decision is motivated by a realistic purpose that you can clearly articulate and defend. It is essential that you understand what you want to achieve and why. It is also useful to decide the criteria you’ll use to define success. Before you commit to a decision, create a mental picture of what your company (or life) will look like once that proposed choice is in place—in the near term and 12 months later.

3. Consider different perspectives

Escape the trap of your inherent biases and invite different opinions to the decision-making. Start with the obvious—stakeholders and end-users who will live with the outcomes, along with those who will implement the decision. If you have a team, include its members in the process, for they surely bring to the table expertise and experiences that will enrich your understanding of the big picture, as well as factors that could influence its outcome. The unique viewpoints and wisdom of your team could possibly show you that don’t know what you don’t know!

4. Leverage relevant data and technology

In today’s digital age, there is every reason to turn to technology-supplied data to provide trustworthy insights that are grounded in objective information to guide your business decisions. Data-driven decisions are usually the most successful. You may have a history of making good decisions based on what your gut tells you, but you’ll be better served to allow (relevant) numbers to validate the power of your intuition.

There are numerous analytic values readily available to provide snapshots of company performance that decision-makers need to see. Your decision may benefit from a review and analysis of the number of qualified leads per month, industry benchmarks, annual sales of your products and services and/or the average dollar amount of new contracts signed per quarter.

5. Avoid analysis paralysis

While good data is essential, as is objective thinking and keeping the purpose of the decision in mind, it’s also important to realize when you have sufficient facts and figures to commit to a choice. It often makes sense to set a reasonable time frame for gathering information, and once you have enough in hand to make an informed choice, move forward.

Trust your judgment and remember that in most cases, all the information you’d like to have will not be available; nearly every decision is haunted by unknown factors. Boost your confidence by creating conditions that will promote effective decision-making when you align your decision with the vision, mission, guiding principles (values) and brand of your organization.

6. Overcome fear of failure

Risk is a factor in every decision because results are not always predictable. Along with good information, luck, timing and intuition are often credited with a decision’s success or failure. All leaders understand that unfortunately, not every decision will lead to a favorable outcome.

Instead of fearing failure, embrace it as a valuable learning experience when it occurs. Do a postmortem and analyze what went wrong; identify the root causes and determine how you can avoid similar pitfalls in the future. When the experience is applied correctly, failure strengthens resourcefulness and resilience and over time will eventually enhance your decision-making skills. A decision gone wrong is embarrassing and disappointing but push yourself to make lemonade from the lemons. You might find a way to fail-up!

7. Practice decision-making consistency

Consistency in decision-making is key to building trust and credibility among your team. If your choices waver based on mood or circumstance, it can create confusion and erode confidence. But you may instead find it helpful to revisit the same, or similar, criteria that were used for a decision whose outcome was especially positive.

If the approach you took, factors you considered and certain friends and mentors you consulted led to a successful outcome previously, those factors, adjusted to fit the question at hand, might be successfully applied to future decisions. Why not experiment? When you’re next faced with a big decision, apply some or all of the criteria you used to approach the question, choose and study the data and seek input from friends or family who have a history of giving you wise advice?

You may discover that it’s useful to evaluate, say, three to five qualifying questions first, then another three to five questions that are customized for your decision? A decision-making protocol that considers the same factors each time will bring objectivity, standardization and reliability to your priorities and judgment and help you avoid getting swept up in the emotional reactions of either reckless enthusiasm or panic.

8. Hone intuition through experience

Decision-making is often considered both an art and a science. It’s a competency that goes beyond algorithms and spreadsheets — it’s about accepting risk and seeking wisdom from data, lived experience, good advice and intuition. Furthermore, learning to recognize when it might be the most advantageous time to make a certain decision is another plus—- when you have the luxury of choosing the time to act, that is.

By adopting a big-picture perspective, leveraging diverse viewpoints and integrating data-driven insights, you will improve your decision-making skills. As you gain experience, your subconscious mind will develop a sense of pattern recognition, meaning you’ll remember what works and so you’ll do it again. Use this intuitive sense to guide you when data is unavailable or inconclusive.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Chess Grandmaster Pontus Carlsson (Colombia born, represents Sweden)) vs. International Master Espen Lie of Norway (R) in Malaga Spain, 2008