Decision making is the action or process of making choices by recognizing the problem, gathering information about alternatives and choosing based on the best alternative.
For every decision taken, there is a measure of uncertainty. Therefore, no decision making is small.
There are three elements involved in making good choices:
- The quality of your definition of specific factors that must be satisfied.
- The quality of your evaluation of available alternatives
- The quality of your assessment of the risks associated with those alternatives.
Yet too often decisions are made without assessment of the risks associated with a final choice.
Before making a choice, it is important to consider possible adverse consequences of feasible alternatives. The negative consequences of any action are as important as its benefits.
Once a decision has been made, any of its negative consequences will eventually become real problems. The effects of decisions—good or bad—always outlive the decision-making process that produced them.If exploring potential risks is so important, why do people often fail to go through the process?
Here are some common reasons for failing to go through the process.
It seems like a waste of time to analyze potential risks , If an analysis of alternatives produces an obvious best choice.
Oftentimes, people are reluctant to inject a dose of pessimism when everyone else seems enthusiastic about the choice that has been made.
Inability to apply the lessons of the past to the decisions of today.
Once the best choice among alternatives is identified, with all the available data , we can further analyze the facts that went into a decision, , and ask: What did we miss? Can we afford the risks involved with this choice? A risk attached to an alternative is not necessarily a totally damning factor, provided that the risk is understood. Shakespeare once wrote: “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” With that in mind, we must thoroughly explore and evaluate the possible adverse consequences of a decision before it is final. This presents an opportunity to deal with such effects at no cost beyond a little intellectual effort. Having recognized and assessed risks, we may be able to avoid them altogether or take steps now that will reduce their effect in the future.
According to Kepner Tregoe’s blog on the consequences of choice: the final steps in decision making, “The further into the future a proposed action extends, the less certain it can be. It is because of these uncertainties that decision making depends on judgments, evaluations, experience, and intuitive feelings. All of these supply the valid data needed to support the correct decision. The inner voice that says, I don’t feel right about this, may be a valuable resource.
We will not lose any sleep over an adverse consequence of low probability and minimal seriousness. But we should be alarmed by an adverse consequence that is both highly probable and very serious. A good decision is one that will work. No decision is so small; no alternative so excellent in comparison to its rivals; no situation so patently fail-safe to warrant ignoring the possibility of adverse consequences before implementing a choice”.
Excerpts culled from Consequences of choice: The final step in decision making, a write up by Kepner Tregoe.
