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Management
hunches are often good. If you are a competent, experienced
professional in your role, using your intuition may work well.
But this isn't enough for most of today's business decision
making. You need information, but you need it in simple, practical
formats to make effective decisions quickly.
Keep
it simple
The
Upside–Downside Model – a simple decision support
tool
The
Upside–Downside model simply groups information relevant to
your decision as either positive or negative for a Yes/No
decision, or favouring choice A or choice B for an either/or
decision.
Yes/
No decisions
Use
the Upside-Downside model to help you with Yes/ No decisions.
Divide the information into two lists: one supporting the
decision and one against it. Just writing it down will help
to clarify it in your mind.
e.g.
Should we run a training programme?
Either/
Or decisions
Contrast
the information that favours choice A with the information
that favours choice B. Make a separate list of any information
that favours both or is not favourable to either.
e.g.
Should we run a management development training programme or customer service training programme?
What
next
The
key challenge with both types of decision is that the answer
may lead to a string of other decisions:
- If you decide not to invest
in a particular training programme, how else are you going
to get the team on target?
- If you decide to increase
your customer service staff by 20%, how are you going to
recruit, train and manage all your new employees?
The
What Next question often has a major influence on your decision,
but it's importance is unrecognised. To support your Upside-Downside
model, make a short list of What Next issues under each option.
Using
the Upside-Downside model gives you a better picture of the
decision you are making. Sometimes saying NO only delays making
a difficult decision, doesn't resolve the issue and prevents
the business moving forward, whereas saying YES may involve
extra work but ensures you make some progress towards your
goals.
And
in the interest of simplicity, that's all you need to do.
My
New Year resolution is not to put off till tomorrow the decisions
I can make today.
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