I Identify the decision

To make a decision, you must first identify the problem you need to solve or the question you need to
answer. Clearly define your decisions. If you misidentify the problem to solve, or if the problem you’ve
chosen is too broad, you’ll knock the decision train off the track before it even leaves the station.

If you need to achieve a specific goal from your decision, make it measurable and timely.

Gather relevant information

Once you have identified your decision, it’s Time to gather the information relevant to that choice. Do
an internal assessment, seeing where your organization has a succeeded and failed in areas related to
your decision. Also, seek information from enternal sources, including studies, market research, and in
some cases, evaluation from paid consultant.

Keep in mind, you can become bogged down by too much information and that might only complicate
the process.

Identify the alternatives

There are usually more than one option to consider when trying to meet a goal. For example, if your
company is trying trying to gain more engagement on social media, your alternatives could include paid
social advertisements, a change in your organic social media strategy, or a combination of the two.

Choose among alternatives

Here is the part of decision-making process where you actually make the decision. Hopefully, you’ve
identified and clarified what decision needs to be made, gathered all relevant information, and
developed and considered the potential paths to take. You should be prepared to choose.

Learn from feedback

After a predetermined amount of time which you defined in step one of the best decision making
process take an honest look back at your decision.

Cognitive biases

Some of these biases are related to memory. The way you remember an event may be biased for a
number of reasons and that, in turn, can lead to biased thinking and decision-making.

Other cognitive biases might be related to problems with attention. Since attention is a limited
resource, people have to be selective about what they pay attention to in the world around them.
The concept of cognitive bias was first introduced by researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman
in 1972. Since then, researchers have described a number of different types of biases that affect
decision-making in a wide range of areas including social behavior, cognition, behavioral economics,
education, management, healthcare, business, and finance.

three approaches for selecting and alternative

Experience- Experienced managers usually believe, often without realizing it, that the things they
have successfully accomplished and the mistakes they have made provide almost a foolproof guide to
the future.

This attitude is likely to grow with their increasing experience and ascendancy to the higher levels of
the organization. Experience helps a great deal to develop the ability to exercise good judgment.

However, if a person carefully analyses experience instead of blindly following it and find out the
actual reasons for or causes of success or failure, the experience can be useful as a basis for decision-
making.

Experimentation

Trying one of the alternatives and see how it goes is the usual way of choosing an alternative. This
kind of experimentation is often used in scientific inquiry.

It is frequently suggested that this method should be used quite often in management.

Because only by trying various alternatives a manager can be sure about the best way, especially in
view of the intangible factors involved in the decision process.

The experimental method is likely to be the most expensive of all methods, particularly where it
involves a substantial amount of money and manpower.

Moreover, even after carrying out an experiment, doubts may remain about its certainty and real
nature. Therefore, this should be used only after considering other alternatives.

Research and analysis

The solution to a planning problem and making a decision about it involves dissecting the problem
into its component parts and studying their various quantitative and qualitative aspects.

Compared with experimentation, study and analysis are likely to be far cheaper. Study and analysis
may require time and volumes of paper but usually, they cost much less than trying various
alternatives.
Building group creativity

Brainstorming

It is a group creativity technique in which members are allowed to generate as many

ideas/requirements as possible without criticism. The brainstorming technique does not prioritize the
ideas. In this technique, the participants are safe to present their very own creative ideas even though
some ideas are unrealistic.

During the process, all the generated ideas/requirements are recorded without any assessments.
Additionally, a productive brainstorming session triggers one idea from another, enabling the team
members to spot the connections between the ideas. It is important to note that this type of synergy
is not found during one-to-one sessions.

Production blocking

is an important cause of productivity loss in brainstorming groups. However, it is not yet clear why
production blocking has this detrimental effect. We hypothesized that delays between the generation
and articulation of ideas, arising when group members wait for their turns, interfere with the
cognitive process of generating ideas. In three experiments, production blocking was simulated for
individuals working at computer terminals. Production blocking interfered with idea generation in two
ways. First, it disrupted the organization of idea generation when delays were relatively long. Second,
it reduced the flexibility of idea generation when delays were unpredictable. Implications for group
information processing are discussed.

The Nominal Group Technique

It is a technique for small group discussion in which ideas and requirements are ranked and prioritized
by all the team members of the group after generating the list of requirements. It enhances the
brainstorming with a voting process that is used to rank the most useful ideas for further
prioritization. This technique prevents the domination of a single person over the discussion by
allowing the voices of all members to be represented. The project manager should ask the team to
rate each idea under a particular heading for providing a better result. All the requirements that are
generated or chosen should be testable and measurable.

Delphi technique

The Delphi method is a process used to arrive at a group opinion or decision by surveying a panel of
experts.

Experts respond to several rounds of questionnaires, and the responses are aggregated and shared
with the group after each round.

The experts can adjust their answers each round, based on how they interpret the “group response”
provided to them.

The ultimate result is meant to be a true consensus of what the group thinks.