Decisions, Decisions

If you encounter a problem in business or in your personal life, making the correct decision is crucial.

This 6 step process will help you reach the right decision every time.

To help you remember the process, here is a mnemonic:

IABEAD

I Am Better Equipped At Deciding

Identify, Analyze, Brainstorm, Evaluate, Anticipate, Do It…!!!

These are the 6 processes you should consider when you have a decision to make.

Depending on the complexity of the issue you may need to formally document each process so that the decision can be reviewed or amended based on changes in any of the steps.

Some complex decisions will require all 6 processes to be completed in order to be sure that you have reached the right decision. During a complex decision making process it is good practice to review the outputs of previous processes to ensure you are still on track.

Some decisions will be easier to make and will not require a formal decision making process. These tend to involve jumping straight to “Do It” – although if you carry out a post mortem on the decision you may find that you have subconsciously completed most, if not all, of the other processes.

Identify

What is the gap between what is happening now and what should be happening?
Without identifying and documenting the real issue or problem the other processes will fail and the final decision will be flawed.
Example: The product delivery was made after 2pm when the contracted time was 10am.

Analyze

There is always a risk of overdoing this step but it is still critical to the process and the easiest way to analyze a problem is to ask a “W(H) Question” five times. (Who, When, Why, Where, What or How)

Example:

1. Why was the delivery late? (Because the driver was late arriving at work).
2. Why was the driver late? (Because he had to work overtime yesterday and needed his mandatory rest period).
3. Why did he have to work overtime? (The previous order wasn’t ready to ship).
4. Why wasn’t the order ready to ship? (The packing machine stopped working).
5. Why did it stop working? (Someone had loaded the wrong size packing film and it jammed).

In this example you can now see we have 5 possible reasons why today’s delivery was late. During the analysis, collect evidence for and against each possible cause and give each a “Score” to help find the most likely (root) cause.

Now that you know the issue and cause, you can begin to work on making an informed decision.

Brainstorm

Using the analytical evidence as input, brainstorm what the options are. Depending on the nature of the decision to be made the brainstorm session might be searching for a solution to a problem (as in the example) or it could be any other decision making process.

Brainstorming techniques are outside the scope of this article but for more information look for the Business Cornerstone Services Brainstorming Guide.

Brainstorming in a nutshell:

• Record all ideas.
• Encourage crazy ideas.
• Don’t evaluate them yet.

So now we are half way towards our goal; we know what the issue is and what our options are – now it’s time to really start deciding on things that are going to change the future.

Evaluate

This is perhaps the most important part of the process as this is when the actual decision is made. (But that’s not to say you should ignore the last two phases).

The input for this phase is taken from the Brainstorm session and we need to evaluate the most rational alternatives to improve our overall chances of making the correct decision.

Each option should be scored against set criteria. In our example of the late delivery these criteria might be things that directly affect the company’s bottom line e.g. cost, time, resources or intangibles such as the effect on customer service etc. therefore something that doesn’t cost very much to implement might score 9/10 but something that takes 6 months and extra resource to maintain the solution might only score 2/10.

Using a spreadsheet matrix is a good way of ensuring all aspects have been evaluated and allows extra weighting to be given to critical criteria such as cost.

Review the gap or problem from the identify stage. Does each suggestion make sense?
Perhaps one solution stands out that is clearly the correct decision, or maybe a process of elimination is needed to reduce the number of options. In our example, maybe there is no capital budget available to buy a new machine so that option can be ruled out of the process. Similarly, telling customers to expect late deliveries doesn’t cost anything and is quick to do but reducing customer service may lose customers completely.

If more than one person is involved in the decision making process make sure that everyone is in agreement (or that you have a majority vote). Document any objections; you may need to revise your decision if it doesn’t work.

Anticipate

Ask: “What could go wrong?”

Always have a “Plan B” in case the decision made doesn’t work the way you intended it to. Review the brainstorming notes, there may be a good idea in there that slipped through the process that you could re-evaluate.

Do It…

With any decision comes a future action.
Who owns the project/process? Make sure this is documented and communicated.
What resources are needed? Who will do what? By when?

Conduct a Post Action Review: Did the decision produce the expected results or do you need to go back a couple of steps in the process to re-evaluate, re-analyze or even start over to make sure the issue was correctly identified?

Was it the right decision?

Other examples

The example used throughout this article is about a problem in a place of work, but the decision making process could simply be:

Where shall we eat dinner tonight?

Think about the process of getting a group of people to have a meal together. You need to identify what each person likes and dislikes; you need to ask who, where, when; two or more people may discuss different restaurants and then the group decides on one they would all like to try.

If it is a very popular restaurant you may have a backup option in case you can’t get a table. Someone will be tasked to drive or ring for a taxi, someone else may be in charge of making the booking…

Congratulations, you’ve just used IABEAD.