![\"Tough](\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/decisions-600x325.jpg\")
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Want to be a leader or a manager in the business world? Then you\u2019re going to have to be able to take decisions. More importantly, you want to be able to make decisions that improve productivity and impact positively on the place you work.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s often an assumption that \u201cdecision making\u201d is an innate skill of natural born leaders but nothing could be further from the truth. While a section of people can work out the decision making process for themselves; many more have to learn how to make decisions.<\/p>\n
There are a bunch of factors which influence our decision making and learning to recognize those factors is in itself a critical skill. You might, for example, make a different decision when your job is on the line than when there\u2019s no pressure, you might be tired and rush to make a decision when you\u2019d be better off thinking about it, and so on. No two decisions are exactly the same.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re faced with making a decision; you can employ a fairly simple process before you make the decision:<\/p>\n
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Before you start making decisions about a problem; it\u2019s best to examine the problem itself. All too often, poor managers and leaders make decisions but about the wrong things.<\/p>\n
For example; your team aren\u2019t performing as well as you would like. It\u2019s very easy to assume that the fault lays with the team and thus start on a decision making process regarding motivating or upskilling the team. Training or discipline?<\/p>\n
But what if the reason for their lack of productivity has nothing to do with the team? What if it\u2019s down to the heat of the office? Or a shortage of parts for their work? Or any of a hundred other things?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a simple technique to getting to the underlying problem. Ask \u201cWhy?\u201d and keep asking it until you\u2019ve reached a point that you can\u2019t go beyond (you may have to hunt for answers to some \u201cwhy?\u201d questions \u2013 you won\u2019t always have the answers to hand).<\/p>\n
So, for example, \u201cWhy is my team not performing?\u201d might lead you to \u201cThe work environment is very dirty and it\u2019s hard to work in.\u201d Then \u201cWhy is the work environment very dirty?\u201d might get you to \u201cBecause the cleaning staff only comes in on weekends.\u201d That\u2019s a problem that you can address.<\/p>\n
Some problems are easy to fix. If the cleaners don\u2019t come in often enough and you have the budget for it- you can solve the issue pretty easily.<\/p>\n
However, others require some deeper thought. Before you make a decision you want to come up with a list of possible solutions. A little brainstorming can go a long way to get this list together.<\/p>\n
What if you didn\u2019t have the budget for additional cleaning? You might be able to change the cleaner\u2019s shifts so that they came in mid-week rather than weekends \u2013 alleviating some of the issue. You might be able to get your employees to take responsibility for cleaning up as part of their duties. You might need to get involved yourself.<\/p>\n
![\"o-decision-making-tips-facebook\"](\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/o-DECISION-MAKING-TIPS-facebook-600x400.jpg\")
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Your objective, in our cleaning example, is to get your staff to be more productive. If you change the cleaner\u2019s shifts \u2013 you will gain some productivity benefits but the workplace will still be dirtier than it should be and production will suffer.<\/p>\n
On the other hand if you get your employees to assume responsibility for cleaning; you\u2019re going to lose some productive time each day to the cleaning. Will the gains outweigh the losses? Will it be better or worse than changing the cleaner\u2019s shifts? What about the impact on your staff of having to do cleaning as part of their work?<\/p>\n
If you take over the job; you might find that productivity surges but at what cost to your ability to manage and lead your team? Cleaning is going to take time away from your other duties.<\/p>\n
Weighing up solutions will help you better understand which solution will best achieve your objectives. Then making a decision should be easy.<\/p>\n
Ideally, you don\u2019t want to rush a decision. You want to think through your options and see how they might (or might not) help you achieve your objectives. There\u2019s a reason that we \u201cact in haste\u201d and \u201crepent at leisure\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, sometimes the occasion calls for an instant decision. At those points, you use the information you have at hand and make the call. You won\u2019t always make perfect decisions but that\u2019s understood \u2013 as long as you make more right decisions that wrong ones \u2013 you\u2019ll be respected within the workplace and your people will trust in you.<\/p>\n
![\"decision-making\"](\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/decision-making-600x330.jpg\")
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\u201cThose that don\u2019t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.\u201d This is true of all history not just the stuff in school textbooks. Once you make a decision \u2013 you don\u2019t walk away and forget about it.<\/p>\n
Instead, you come back and examine the impacts of the decision. Did the decision lead to an improvement or a positive result? Could you have got a better result if you\u2019d done something differently?<\/p>\n
If the decision didn\u2019t have the outcome you expected; why not? What should have done instead to get the results you needed?<\/p>\n
Learning from your decisions will help you make better decisions in the future. You don\u2019t need to spend too much time worrying about the decision to wear the black shoes or the brown shoes in most cases but when you make a decision which impacts the business and the lives of people within the business \u2013 you should reflect on that decision. Then you\u2019ll be writing new histories and not rehashing the mistakes of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Want to be a leader or a manager in the business world? Then you\u2019re going to have to be able to take decisions. More importantly, you want to be able to make decisions that improve productivity and impact positively on the place you work. There\u2019s often an assumption that \u201cdecision making\u201d is an innate skill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":69336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-69329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69339,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69329\/revisions\/69339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}