Management Voice Index
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As you return to work and swap ‘Happy New Year' stories with colleagues, you are probably facing a series of decisions that need to be made. If you left for the holidays thinking ‘I'll decide on that when I get back' , then now is the time.

Quick Tips on Making Decisions

Most of us need to get started on projects, decide on a course of action or prioritise work pretty quickly. Indeed, slow decision making, or even no decision making, can be more risky to the business than making a ‘less than perfect' decision.

So, here are some useful pointers to get you started.

1        Upside / downside

Used when there is a ‘Yes/No' decision. Quickly list the upsides and downsides. If there are no major downsides, the answer is Yes. If there are no major upsides, the question should be ‘why bother'?

2        80-20 rule (the Pareto principle)

Used when prioritising several projects or actions. First do the projects that will give you 80% of the result you need, it is often harder to get the last 20% than the first 80%.

3                  Degrees of success

Also used for choosing between several projects. This process asks you to list the projects in terms of the likelihood of them succeeding and choosing the ones most likely to succeed first.

4                  Risk reward

Another way to choose from several competing projects. Create a 2 x 2 box with High & Low Risk on one side, and High & Low Reward on the other. Place projects/ tasks in the boxes appropriately. Aim for the Low Risk High Reward projects first.

5                 Do nothing option

A good way to weed out your to-do list. Be honest, what would happen if you didn't do this project/task? If the fall out would be minimal – cut it out!

6                  Best fit

A useful approach to deciding HOW to do something. List the desired outcomes and key constraints of your project or task. Map each possible approach against this list:

Score out of 3 for each feature. 0 = doesn't meet the need,

1 = just meets need, 2 = reasonable fit, 3 = good fit.

Look first at the approaches with the highest score.

7                  Cost Benefit

Another 2 x 2 box, with High & Low Cost for one dimension, and High & Low Benefit for the other. Look first at the Lowest Cost, Highest Benefit projects.

8                 Decide on 'no decision'

Occasionally you may not be able to make a decision. In this case, you have two main options: 1) you completely ‘bin' the project and go back to the drawing board, or 2) you ‘bottle it' to be reviewed again at a specified date.

Which method is best?

It depends! Most of the time there are a variety of actions we could take, some of which will work out well, and some won't. It is rare for there to be an ‘absolute best' decision. Trying to make ‘the best decision' is always dependent on your point of view (best for whom?) and the amount of information you have (rarely complete). Whatever your situation, it's usually better to make a decision and get on with it, than not.

Management Voice Index
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