OK, here’s another fact of life we all must face—when there’s a decision to make—should you have a slice of carrot cake, or should you skip dessert—or maybe there’s something on the table that’s more important than splurging on dessert? Leaders of Freelance solopreneur entities may have an important business decision to examine. To complicate your task, there is also the matter of determining which data resources will give your decision-making process the best support?

It’s often the case that some information that would be useful will not be available to you, for some reason or another. For example, despite the considerable amount of website and social media engagement data that’s at your fingertips, along with your company financial records and perhaps also industry reports, some that may have been generated by heavyweights like Accenture or McKinsey, you may nevertheless struggle to interpret and utilize certain information. There is often data you don’t have and sometimes also data whose relevance you don’t understand.

In fact, there is also data that indicates that misunderstanding how to leverage data can lead to mistrust of data. Doubting your data can cause you to regret certain of your decisions, because you fear that you may have misinterpreted the data and that your possible miscalculation might spoil the decision outcome. You may fear that a previous decision made failed to deliver the desired outcome because you either didn’t interpret the data appropriately or you relied on the wrong metrics.

A 2023 study found that those called upon to make decisions, especially impactful business decisions, rather frequently feel overwhelmed, and perhaps even unqualified, to sort through and recognize which data will be helpful to the decision-making process and that the phenomenon is hurting the quality of their business performance. According to The Decision Dilemma, a 2023 study by Oracle and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, the New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life (2022), it is common to feel regret caused by the possibility of having made an unfortunate decision. Study outcomes showed that 85% of participating business leaders admitted questioning certain decisions they made over the previous 12 months. Furthermore, the 72% of participants who admitted that the sheer volume of data is overwhelming, along with the 35% of participants who were unable to determine which data or data sources were either relevant or accurate, caused most in the study to lose trust in data. Moreover, that lack of trust has at times prevented them from making a decision.

The 14,000+ employees and business leaders across 17 countries who participated revealed that business owners and leaders are struggling to make decisions in their (personal and) professional lives at a time when they are expected to make more decisions than ever before: 74 % of respondents reported that the number of decisions they make every day has increased by 10x over the last three years. Additionally, 85 % of respondents feel unable to make good decisions. That feeling of inadequacy has a negative impact on their quality of life, from causing them to experience anxiety (36%), to miss business opportunities (33%) and contributing to unnecessary spending (29%). As a result, 93% of respondents reported that they’ve changed how they make decisions.

As a leader, knowing what should factor into making the best decision you can is crucial. How might company expenses, products and/or services, your company brand, or customers be impacted? You might not have access to all the information you’d like, but you are most likely aware of a number of key factors that will give some indication of the outcome of your decision. To that end, I share with you decision-making suggestions compiled by members of the Inc. Magazine Leadership Forum, a group of founders and C-Suite business leaders who understand that decision-making without complete information is an everyday occurrence, making the availability of a framework to guide your process essential

SEE THE BIG PICTURE AND PICK A DIRECTION

Decision-makers are encouraged to keep the big picture of your organization and what you’d like the decision to bring about as you predict potential outcomes and assess risks that help you to weigh possible losses before deciding which actions you’ll take (strategy development). This approach ensures that your decision will align with long-term organization goals and promote its growth.

Remember also that in many cases, making almost any decision is better than not making a decision and that making no decision is a decision by default. Choosing against making a decision is not a synonym for caution. Pick a direction, commit to it and then do all that you can do to make it work. Your final result may not be 100 % perfect but it may suffice and, best of all, can take you a step closer to your ultimate goal.

BREAK AWAY FROM FEAR AND FOCUS ON GROWTH

Alas, it is inevitable that many decision-makers are imprisoned by the fear of negative outcomes. Avoiding risk is an essential ingredient in every decision-making process, but risk management should not be an expression of fear, because fear limits opportunities. Letting go of fear allows you to recognize and pursue opportunities, especially when the quest for opportunity is leavened by appropriate risk assessment and management.

Psychologists have proposed numerous strategies to help side-step fear (which is usually exaggerated or even irrational). Identifying the worst-case scenario of your decision outcomes, which is an element of scenario-planning, is perhaps one of the best remedies. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best!

CONFIRM FACTS AND AVOID CONFIRMATION BIAS

Separate facts from interpretation that’s tainted by confirmation bias. Also known as wishful thinking, confirmation bias lulls you into interpreting information in a way that conforms with what you expect or would like to happen; you may be inclined to ignore or discredit information that does not support your preferred outcome.

That said, don’t be afraid to be guided by the outcomes of previous decisions, whether or not they produced the preferred outcome. Trust your track record and do the best you can with the available data and the resources that are in hand. Once you’ve done your homework and objectively examined the available information, have faith that it may be preferable to take a chance and own a mistake than to play it safe and lose out on creative, innovate decision.

You can escape the blinders of confirmation bias by asking yourself the tough questions. It will be wise to confirm that your company has the necessary resources, for example, market share, revenue, expertise and/or relationships to implement certain decisions. If your resources appear to be lackluster, you may need to launch a remedial plan—an interim decision— before embarking on a decision-making process to launch a major initiative.

ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

Consider initiating your decision-making process by creating a list to catalogue the decision options that are available to you. It’s very basic, but it’s helpful to know what your options are. You can also rank what appear to be the best options by next listing the potential benefits associated with each direction available. You want to be able to confirm that your assumptions reflect the best picture formed with current data and also to acknowledge that which you are unable to know.

Assumptions are like the scaffolding used on a building but they are tricky because they are vulnerable to confirmation bias—magical thinking you want to avoid. Yet, assumptions in decision-making are necessary because you need a few “givens” to depend on—the size of your customer base, the performance of your best-selling services, the impact of your major competitors, for example. The danger is when your assumptions remain invisible. Unexamined beliefs about people, processes, or systems can silently distort judgment and create blind spots. 

ASSESS WHAT IS UNKNOWN

How wonderful it would be to know what you don’t know—or at least recognize that there are happenings about which you haven’t got a clue. Another useful contribution to successful decision-making is to brainstorm about the unknowns. How can you figure out how to know what you don’t know? When compiling and analyzing data, you may not realize that it’s primarily a collection of vanity metrics. If you invest an hour, or a day or a week, to think about the unknowns, you’ll have a better chance of coming to the table with a true understanding of what factors are in play for your decision. Keep a piece of paper and a pencil handy and write down what comes to mind when you least expect it.

DETERMINE WHAT CAN BE ADJUSTED

Catalogue what must be right about the outcome of your decision and what can be adjusted later. As noted above, pick a direction, assess the likely risks and fix what needs some adjustment. When information is incomplete, and that’s often the case, you might decide to follow a strategy that has wiggle-room for a reversible choice or two. Sometimes, time matters—either you are compelled to make a decision to save yourself a peck of trouble, or you want to catch a good opportunity and you may be holding enough cards to catch the wave and ride it. Momentum matters—but it has to be paired with flexibility so that the right adjustments can be made in response to unexpected developments or if new information becomes available.

PROTECT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Because information may be incomplete or inscrutable, you will likely be well-served to let protecting (or enhancing) the quality of your customer experience be your decision-making guiding star. In a fast-changing business environment, you’ll rarely have all the answers to questions that would clarify your understanding and affirm the path you should take. If your decision preserves customer trust and, if possible, enables you to keep the business to rather quickly and efficiently adapt to marketplace fluctuations, you can more easily make adjustments if there is push-back from your customers. Depending on the decision you must make, it could make sense to get some input from customers to learn how they might feel about changes that would be visible or impactful to them.

ACCEPT MISTAKES AND COURSE-CORRECT

It is not unusual for Freelancers and other business leaders to be called upon to make impactful decisions quickly and with only partial, maybe even questionable, information. You must learn to accept that mistakes will be made. Impact comes from being able to identify, own and modify decisions as new information surfaces. The real mistake is to hold on to bad decisions because they were already made.

You rarely have complete information, so effective leaders learn to make timely, confident decisions using their experience, industry knowledge, understanding of the broader environment, and awareness of the competitive landscape—then quickly course-correct if new information shows the decision should be adjusted.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Adobe Stock, generated with AI