By being a business owner, you are in charge of making difficult and challenging decisions that are in direct relationship with the future of the business on your hand. Decision making skills are essential to solve problems by selecting one course of action from several possible options. The hard part is to pick the one option where the positive outcome and outweigh possible losses. People often feel much easier just to avoid making decisions. However, making your own decisions is the only way to stay in control of yourself.
Even if you are not a business owner, if you want to lead effectively, you need to be able to make smart decisions. A significant part of making smart decisions is in knowing and practicing good decision making techniques.
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Step 1: Identify the problem. What exactly is the problem and why it should be solved?
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Step 2: Write down the causes of the problem.
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Step 3: Write down the criteria that the solution must meet.
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Step 4: Brainstorm the options that could lead to the solution proposed above.
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Step 5: Evaluate the options to find out the pros and cons of each option.
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Step 6: Choose the best option and create a plan to put the option into action.
Example:
A manager has accepted a job at a failing service center. He immediately recognizes the problem - poor customer service.
The manager decides to improve the customer service level by at least 50%. He runs a survey to find out why customers think that their service is poor and gets the following comments (total 108 feedbacks) from the customers:
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It takes too long to reach a service representative. (Lack of help desk staff, 11 complaints)
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Service representatives seem very impatient and impolite. (Lack of help desk staff training, 32 complaints)
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Service representatives do not always seem to know what they are doing. (Lack of help desk staff training, 16 complaints)
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Onsite support staffs do not appear to be prepared when they make onsite visits. Most of the time they have to make second visits to complete the required tasks. (Lack of field tech staff training, 12 complaints)
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Sometimes when onsite support staffs arrive on site, the customer finds that the problem could have been solved over the phone. (Lack of help desk staff training, 10 complaints)
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It takes too long to schedule onsite visits. (Lack of onsite tech staff, 27 complaints)
The manager groups these problems/causes together:
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Lack of help desk staff: items 1: 11 complaints
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Lack of onsite tech staff: items 6: 27 complaints
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Lack of help desk staff training: items 2, 3, 5: 58 complaints
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Lack of onsite tech staff training: items 4: 12 complaints
To improve the overall customer service level the manager has the following options:
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Increase help desk staff (11 / 108 complaints)
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Increase onsite tech staff (27 / 108 complaints)
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Provide help desk staff training (58 / 108 complaints)
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Provide onsite tech staff training (12 / 108 complaints)
The manager finds out that the majority of the problems (54%) can be solved by providing help desk staff training. He then writes down the detailed steps to train the help desk staff, and execute the plan. After that, the manager may consider increase the onsite tech staff.
Final remark. Decision making is not easy and it takes a lot of practice to make effective decisions. Taking the time to develop and evaluate possible options will pay off in the long run.
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