All human beings are faced with certain situations in their everyday life, where they need to take important decisions. However, decisions that are made without any planning have a risk of leading to failure. To avoid such problems, it is necessary to take decisions in an organized way. This can be done by following these six steps of decision making.
Decision making is usually defined as the act of making up your mind about something. However, the process of decision making is not as easy as it sounds. There are certain important decisions that you have to make which can change the course of your life. Even at a workplace, one is confronted with problems or dilemmas, where the solutions should cater to the need of others around you. Such decisions have to be made in a careful way, especially if it is going to affect you monetarily, or if it is going to bring major changes in your life. Thus, it is important to take decisions in a systematic way, so that the decision you make has high chances of being successful. The article here discusses the 6 stages in decision making, that can help in clarifying certain things in your mind before you take the final decision. These steps will also help enhance your decision-making skills for different types of decision making.
How to Make a Decision in Six Steps
The first step towards a decision-making procedure is to define the problem. Obviously, there would be no need to make a decision without having a problem. So, the first thing one has to do is to state the underlying problem that has to be solved. You have to clearly state the outcome that you desire after you have made the decision. This is a good way to start, because stating your goals would help you in clarifying your thoughts.
The situation of making a decision arises because there are many alternatives available for it. Hence, the next step after defining the main problem would be to state out the alternatives available for that particular situation. Here, you do not have to restrict yourself to think about the very obvious options, rather you can use your creative skills and come out with alternatives that may look a little irrelevant. This is important because sometimes solutions can come out from these out-of-the-box ideas. You would also have to do adequate research to come up with the necessary facts that would aid in solving the problem.
This can be said to be one of the most important stages of the decision-making procedure where you have to analyze each alternative you have come up with. You have to find out the advantages and disadvantages of each option. This can be done as per the research you have done on that particular alternative. At this stage, you can also filter out the options that you think are impossible or do not serve your purpose. Rating each option with a numerical digit would also help in the filtration process.
This is the stage where the hard work you have put in analyzing would lead to a proper decision. The evaluation process would help you with clearly looking at the available options and you have to pick whichever you think is the most applicable. You can also club some of the alternatives to come out with a better solution instead of just picking out any one of them
The next obvious step after choosing an option would be implementing the solution. Just making the decision would not give the result one wants. Rather, you have to carry out the decision you have made. This is a very crucial step because all the people involved in implementation of a solution should know about their implications. This is very essential for the decision to give successful results.
Just making a decision and implementing it, is not the end of the decision-making procedure. It is crucial to monitor your decision regularly once they are implemented. At this stage, you have to keep a close eye on the progress made by implementing the solutions. You may need to measure the implemented result against your expected standards. Monitoring of solutions since early stage may also help you to alter your decisions, if you notice deviation of results from your expectations.
These steps may, at first, seem very complicated. However, these are essential decision-making techniques that would aid you in taking proper decisions in your personal as well as professional life. Moreover, decision making is an ongoing process and will never come to a standstill.
