Choices. We have so many options when it comes to ways to achieve our goals. But what is the best option? How can we make sure we are doing the right thing? Can we ensure that we are choosing the right way and the best course of action?

One of the biggest challenges of decision-making is generating, assessing, and then choosing from among the different solutions there are to any given challenge. This is why for most decisions we use heuristics – simple rules of thumb – to avoid the extra brain power needed to make decisions. In neurological terms, we save load on the pre-frontal cortex by using automatic routines saved and accessed through the limbic system.

But we can’t always do that. Often, we are faced with a new or more important decision where we cannot entirely rely on previous experience. That might be buying a car or property, changing jobs, or just working out what to do in our free time, but if the choice has a large impact on time and money then we are likely to spend longer considering our options. Working out the best course of action (or “COA” in military parlance) is therefore a critical element of effective decision-making.

Options and choices

One summer I was mountaineering in the French Alps with a group of friends.  We had just spent a few days bagging some routes when someone had the idea of tackling a nearby climb. It was not one we originally planned to do as it was a higher grade than we were generally comfortable with.

That season there had been very little snow and the ridges were more exposed and icy than usual. So, as this route was following a ridge, I argued that it would be in bad condition. It was likely to be even harder than the guidebook suggested.  The weather was also set to change for the worse, so as far as I could see, the risks outweighed the opportunity.

I thought my logic was sound but the person who had proposed the climb was more charismatic than me. He managed to persuade the other two members of the group to agree with him. They wanted to give the climb a go.  It was three against one, and I knew they needed four people to attempt the route. Therefore the pressure was on for me to accept the majority decision. But I genuinely believed it was not a safe option. It was a tough conversation. I then made myself very unpopular when I refused to do the climb. It was a stand-off. They needed a fourth climber and therefore all we could do as a group was head back down the valley.

The right course of action

Fortunately for them, they found another willing climber to make the fourth member of the party. I meanwhile, by now feeling somewhat of an outcast, decided to go solo trekking for a couple of days. As I was on my own I decided to stay below the snow line and try and avoid the bad weather by heading to another valley.

I spent most of the next few days feeling guilty about being stubborn but when I returned I found that my decision had been justified.  The weather had deteriorated and the route proved to be in poor condition, as I had predicted.  After a few hours of struggling in dangerous conditions, my old climbing partners were forced to make an emergency descent. The deteriorating weather meant they also had to make a hasty retreat back down to the town. We exchanged stories and made up over a couple of beers, ready to find new routes and climb again when the weather improved.

It turned out that we were the lucky ones; that weekend ten people lost their lives in the Mont Blanc area as high winds whipped people off icy ridges.

“A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It’s the testing point of our character and competence.” – Stephen Covey

The Right Questions Guidebook Tool: considering options and courses of action

Whatever we do in life we are faced with options and choices. As in the story I shared, even if we are progressing towards our goal, we might be presented with new opportunities to consider and decisions we need to make.

Therefore, this stage of the decision-making cycle is all about considering options and we use the interrogative “which” within The Right Questions Framework. In other words, we are answering the questions:

• Which options (courses of action) are available to me?
• Which risks and opportunities will impact my decision?
• Which is the best course of action?

To explore these questions fully we can use The Guidebook Tool. It is called the Guidebook Tool because we use guidebooks to inform our choices. If we travel overseas on vacation we might use a guidebook to help us with options of places to eat or things to see. When I do long-distance walks I take a guidebook to help with route options and choices of places to stay. As per my climbing story, I had a mountaineering guidebook to help consider different climbs and their grading of difficulty. So, whatever adventure we are on, a guidebook can help us consider courses of action.

Here we use The Right Questions Guidebook Tool to generate our own options. The tool breaks down the important questions into several steps. These steps are:

1. Brainstorm multiple options
2. Refine several courses of action
3. Assess the courses of action
4. Identify obstacles and risks
5. Decide the preferred option

This can be remembered with the acronym BRAID.

Having made the decision, we then move on to the next phase of decision-making where we develop the plan (and answer the how, who and when questions). But for now, let’s examine the four steps outlined above.

The Quest

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Brainstorming your options

When facing an important decision, it is generally a good idea to brainstorm multiple ideas before narrowing down the options. This is an important phase as it can unearth new ways of approaching a problem and can free us from certain assumptions. If we restrict ourselves at this stage to what we think is just sensible, affordable, or realistic then we might miss out on important opportunities or insights.

For brainstorming techniques, you can refer to the associated post, Brainstorming Ideas of How to Achieve Your Goals.

“Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists.”

Edward de Bono

Generating courses of action

Once you have brainstormed a long list of potential options, the next step is to refine this list down to a few preferred courses of action. Using the heuristic of The Rule of 3 I generally recommend three courses of action which can be developed in outline and inform a decision.

You could prioritise your list from the options using your intuition and what feels like the best option.

For example your intuitive options might be:

1. What is the most exciting option?
2. What is the most sensible option?
3. Which is the scariest option?

Alternatively, you might want to apply some rationale to the selection of your courses of action. One simple way to come up with three courses of action is to look at resources. You might ask:

1. What is the option if money is no object?
2. What is the option if time is no problem?
3. What is the option if people and skills are no problem?

Example of 3 Generic Courses of Action for projects and tasks:

When making a business or project plan then there are some other questions we can consider to create courses of action. For example:

1. Which course of action best fits what is most likely to happen?
2. Which course of action represents the worst possible situation?
3. Which course of action allows for the swiftest outcome?

Answering these questions allows three courses of action and outline plans that reflect

1. The logical plan (most likely)
2. The contingency plan (worst case)
3. The fastest effect plan (which is often the riskiest or costliest)

These questions work well when dealing with a critical (time-dependent) issue, so if these questions don’t suit (for example if money rather than time was the most important factor) then you could also ask:

1. Which is the most elegant (gold-pated) option?
2. Which is the simplest (silver) option?
3. Which is the cheapest (bronze) option?

Once three courses of action have been selected then the next step is to explore a simple outline plan for each. To do this we answer the questions:

• How will we achieve the goal (what are the necessary milestones, tasks, or steps)?
• How will this course of action be resourced?
• When could or should each step be achieved?
• Who can help or support each activity?

At this stage, we are not doing detailed planning so the answers to each of these can be simplified.

It is worth noting that this technique tends to favour business plans rather than personal plans. If you would like another way to prioritise your courses of action, I would recommend seeing which ones align most with your values (be that your personal values or organisational values). Using principles also helps us assess our three courses of action so we will explore that in the next section.

“There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs” – Thomas Sowell

Assessing the courses of action using values and principles

Once we have three courses of action (with outlined plans to check their feasibility) the next stage is to assess them against each other and come up with the chosen course. As previously, you can just use your intuition to make the choice, but you may also want to apply some further logic. If you do have an initial gut feeling about which one you like, then make a note of it. Our intuition is based on our experience and preferences – so it is certainly worth considering – but it is also subject to our biases so it is worth noting to avoid subconscious bias subverting our decision-making.

My preferred way of assessing courses of action is by scoring them against a set of principles or values. To start, I will generally create a matrix, listing the courses of action on one axis and then the principle on the other. I then fill in the grid, scoring each course of action against each value out of 10. I then create a total score for each per the example below.

	Principle 1	Principle 2	Principle 3	Total Score
Course of action 1	(Score 0-10)
Course of action 2
Course of action 3

There is no limit to the number of principles you want to employ but for simplicity, I would not recommend any more than 7-8.

The principles you choose are dependent upon the decision. You might want to use your personal values if it is a choice that most impacts you, such as a change of career. If you are making a business decision then you may want to use your organisation’s corporate values. Equally, there may be a set of specific principles you want to apply. For example, in an investment decision, you might want to employ principles from an expert such as Warren Buffet. It is worth taking a little time to make sure you have the most appropriate precepts to score your courses of action against.

Assessing courses of action with opportunity and risks

An alternative or subsequent way to assess the course of action is considering opportunity versus risk. Here you might use the risks identified when using The Emergency Kit Tool explained in the section on risk assessment.

These risks should then be weighed against the overall opportunity. As with risk, it might be that your chosen principles best summarise the opportunity of a given course of action. If not then consider the potential pay-off, in time, money or quality, for each course of action. Then you can weigh the risk versus the reward. For example, sometimes it is riskier to move quickly on a decision but the payoff – in terms of cumulative gain, time saved or first mover advantage – might be a risk worth taking. This is effectively a simple cost-benefit analysis of your courses of action.

Making the right choice (and better future decisions)

Finally, having assessed the courses of action you can make your choice. Depending upon which course of action scored the highest or had the best balance of risk versus opportunity, you can now commit to that option.

Having made the decision, you can then go on to more detailed planning. You will likely find that your new plans will also incorporate lessons from the other options you looked at. For example, you might well keep the worst-case or contingency plan up your sleeve just in case something goes wrong. Equally, you might have a plan that has stages that incorporate further decision points, dependent upon the balance of risk and reward. As the plans develop, you will discover that the thinking at this stage is not wasted.

Going through this process of creating and assessing courses of action has a further benefit. The formal process forces us to think deeper which will reinforce any learning points for the next decision. Recording the process, and the final choice, also allows us to go back and measure how effective our decisions were. We will not always get things right, but this reflective process will help improve overall decision-making. Decision-making is a skill like any other and for effective learning, we need to be able to reflect on what we have done.

Picking the best course of action

So, if you have options and want to make the best-informed decision follow these BRAID steps:

1. Brainstorm multiple options (be creative)
2. Refine courses of action (down to 3 ideally)
3. Assess the courses of action (against principles or values)
4. Identify obstacles (and mitigate the risks)
5. Decide upon the best course of action (make the choice)

And one final tip, think about when you want or need to make the decision. It is easy to prevaricate, put off a decision, or miss an opportunity entirely. Setting a deadline and creating a timeline for your decision-making helps to avoid these outcomes. Depending upon the impact of the decision you might want to spend 5 minutes or 5 hours thinking through your choice, but as productivity experts will tell you, the best starting point is assigning time to make the decision, as that is a task in itself.

So, what decision do you need to make and when? If you can’t make the choice now, then take a few seconds to schedule time in your diary. And if you want some further advice on the steps to take then check out A Blueprint for Better Decision-Making.

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

Sun Tzu

We have already seen that values are at our centre and act as a compass to help guide us.  This guidance becomes very practical in decision making as our values help us prioritise.

Living in an age of choice

Being able to prioritise well, and therefore able to make effective decisions, is of ever-increasing importance today.  Never before has there been so much information or so many choices for us to wade through on a daily basis.

In former times, people (especially academics) were valued for what they knew; the experts in their field were the gatekeepers to knowledge on any given subject area.  But that power base has been somewhat eroded in recent years and the value of being a person who just ‘knows things’ has been diminished.  What is the main reason for that?  In short: the Internet.  In the age of the Internet, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before in the history of mankind.

We also have more choice than ever before.  A supermarket is a dangerous place to go without a plan.  Even with two simple staples, rice and sugar, you could fill a whole trolley with the various alternatives on offer in the aisles.  When you go into a coffee shop you can no longer simply ask for a coffee; such a statement would bring consternation for the barista, impatience for other customers and shame for you!  We all know that we need to practise our order while in the queue. We need to say “extra-large-double-shot-skinny-soya-latte to go” with confidence!

Analysis paralysis

But all this choice and information presents a new challenge; people are overloaded with information and paralysed by the number of choices available.  The challenge today is not about knowing things so much as knowing how to sift, analyse and usefully apply the tornado of data that sweeps around us.  Want a lesson in irony?  Type ‘information overload’ into a search engine and see how many results it churns out in a fraction of a second!

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.”  Mitch Kapor

Our values aid us in the battle against information overload and potential analysis paralysis.  This is important as time is spent over decisions and there is an opportunity cost even just in deciding to spend time deliberating an option.  Many people today will spend hours pouring over the next gadget to buy and yet fail to give time to decisions that really matter.

Making good decisions

Making a decision also relieves stress.  The number of decisions we need to make, coupled with the importance of many of these decisions, can put us under real pressure.  By reducing the number of decisions we have to make and actually committing, we can release pressure and reduce our stress levels. Introducing pre-planned systems, processes and delegation can also help.

“Good is the enemy of Great” Jim Collins

One of the challenges that make decisions hard is that we are generally choosing between several good things. It is not just a choice between one good and one bad thing.  This brings in a new challenge. As Jim Collins points out, the ‘good can be the enemy of the great’. Our limited time and resources can be used up on lots of good things but we could still end up missing the best thing.

Therefore prioritising is of critical importance. If we are going to achieve our best then we are going to have to make the right decisions. Our values will help to guide us and if you want help working out your values read:

What Are Your Personal Values?

When was the last time you made a decision? It was probably when you decided to click on the link and read this article! So, what decision-making approach did you use? How much time did you think about it? One way or another you just experienced a decision-making process. And that was but one of perhaps hundreds of decisions you have made already today.

What is decision-making?

Put simply, decision-making is the process of considering, and making a choice between, various courses of action.

A decision can be defined as:

“Come or bring to a resolution in the mind as a result of consideration.”

or

“Make a choice from a number of alternatives.”

Lexico (Oxford English Dictionary)

Decision-making can be further defined as:

“The action or process of making important decisions.

Lexico (Oxford English Dictionary)

But even these definitions, though useful, can be misleading as many of the decisions we make every day are unconscious. Also, we apply process – of sorts – even to non-important decisions.

Decision-making is constant

Decision-making is a process, but it is actually something we do constantly. Whether we are conscious of the process or not, we are faced with a multitude of decisions to make every day. Estimates vary as to exactly how many, but, researcher Sheena Iyengar did studies of US adults showing they made around 70 conscious decisions on a daily basis.

And there are higher estimates. Researchers at Cornell University have shown that we make 226.7 decisions each day on just food alone (Wansink and Sobal, 2007). I am guessing my .7 decision was when I nearly had that extra cup of coffee…

And that is just for choices about food! Think about all the other decisions we have to make. For example, even as I type I am making a constant string of choices of which words to use in order to express what I want to say.

Some online sources estimate that we make around 35,000 decisions a day. This estimate is based on the number of thoughts we have per second. This is not an exact measure by any means. But, what is certain, is that we have to make loads of decisions! Many of these choices are conscious ones, and these require some sort of applied process.

“Time is like a river that carries us forward into encounters with reality that require us to make decisions. We can’t stop our movement down this river and we can’t avoid those encounters. We can only approach them in the best possible way.”

Ray Dalio

The Paralysis of Analysis

Have you ever stood in a supermarket and stared for an age, weighing up a choice between similar items?

Most of us will have experienced this kind of analysis paralysis to one level or another. It happens when the choice is too great, alternatives too similar or the choice is outside of our usual frame of reference. To avoid this paralysis we often rely on heuristics – simple decision-making tools, rules or hacks – to help us make informed decisions. For example, we might prefer one particular brand or product and just pick that so we don’t have to give it too much thought. This can be an effective heuristic – to save us time, ensure quality or save money.

Using Heuristics

But, knowing about psychology, it is also these sorts of biases and heuristics that marketing experts love to exploit. To understand more on this subject then I recommend you read Daniel Kahneman’s acclaimed book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow‘. Kahneman is recognised as the world leader in understanding heuristics and bias.

As Kahneman demonstrates in his research, most decisions we make are actually unconscious ones. It would take too long to use a process or explore the pros and cons of every decision. We can risk paralysis by analysis if we spend too much time on a decision, as we can become overloaded by information.

Some decisions are relatively unimportant. This could include choosing which clothes to wear, what to eat for lunch or what to watch on television. For these decisions, simple heuristics – even flipping a coin or rolling dice – can be effective.

Some decisions are much more important, such as the choice of spouse, partner, career or work. Similarly, large purchases, such as buying a property, are significant decisions. We instinctively know that we should take more time and effort over the more important decisions. The problem is that we do not necessarily understand how we make decisions. Nor do we have the tools to help us make the best choice. So how can we do it better?

How do we make decisions?

What was the last big decision you made and how did you make it?

We often think of decision making as a rational process where we engage our logic to solve a problem. But decision making is actually not just problem analysis (although they are linked). Also, a lot of decision making is influenced more by emotion than by logic.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Our emotions are very important and employing them does not necessarily make a choice irrational. Emotions and passions are connected to our experiences, preferences and values.

If we were purely rational we would operate according to Rational Choice Theory. This means we would always make the choice that offers the best statistical chance of success or reward. However various scientific studies have shown that this is not the case. We are not purely rational and can be heavily influenced, by ourselves, others and circumstances to make quite irrational decisions.

The psychology of decision-making

People don’t realise that they often influence and even fool themselves. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber published a paper in 2011 that concluded we use our reason and logic, not to get to the truth or to make good decisions, but primarily to strengthen our position and persuade other people that we are right. This is confirmation bias, where we selectively choose data that supports our decision. This is just one example of cognitive bias.

Our circumstances also play a large part in our decision making especially if we are in stressful conditions. At the extreme level, we could be affected by the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ responses first outlined by Walter Bradford Cannon. These physiological responses have a direct influence on our psychology and may even completely override our conscious decision-making capacity.

Other people can also bias our decisions. This could be simple peer pressure or more manipulative influence employed by an individual. Our psychology can be exploited. As mentioned earlier, salespeople used have long understood this, hence strategies such as creating the idea of scarcity or advertising using subliminal suggestion and product placement.

The psychology of decision making is a fascinating and growing field. If you would like to dig deeper into the subject, take a look at ‘The top 10 books on decision-making and thinking.’

What is a decision making process?

Being aware of the influences we have is very important if we want to make good decisions. Decision-making processes can help us as they encourage us to take a step back from our situation and assess it more objectively. This will not eliminate bias but it will help.

Decision-making processes also seek to identify the stages needed to make a decision so we can follow through on a choice in a logical manner. One common breakdown of the steps is shown below:

The 7 steps to a decision-making process

1. Outline the goal or outcome/analyse the problem
2. Gather data/consider factors
3. Develop alternatives/courses of action
4. Consider the pros and cons of each alternative
5. Make the decision
6. Implement the decision/take action
7. Learn from the decision

To some level, most people apply a decision-making process at some time, even if they don’t call it by that name. Making a list of the pros and cons of a decision is one of the simplest and most common decision-making processes. Related to this is the setting of priorities or by reducing choices by process of elimination.

One process we employ is giving our decision making to people and things. Acquiescing responsibility for a decision, as we do to our elected politicians, or delegating decision making to subordinates is a decision making process. Flipping a coin is a way of acquiescing responsibility to fate or probability (depending upon your view of the world) whereas there is also an increasing array of software that we can also use to support our decision making, or even to make decisions for us.

Why are decision making processes important?

How much training have you had, specifically on decision-making?

Despite the importance of decision making and the general awareness of decision-making processes, very few organisations put much time and training into teaching people how to make better decisions. We gain a certain amount of critical thinking and problem analysis through our formal education but few people feel properly prepared to make important decisions in their work, especially when they may need to defend their position, demonstrate their rationale and persuade others to follow a decision.

Many existing processes within organisations support decision making. For example, a tender process, where bids from vendors are received and reviewed, is a decision-making process. This sort of selection process takes into account factors important to a contract, such as cost, quality and the track record of a company. Voting in a meeting is another simple process. It is a democratic heuristic, testing not only how people think or feel about an idea but also then putting pressure on others to support a decision once votes are cast.

Teaching decision making

But few people – including leaders – are taught decision-making skills that can be used more generally. There are a few institutions that have recognised the importance of teaching tools and processes to their decision-makers, in order to equip them to make informed choices. The military and the medical profession are key examples of this. This is because those with responsibility in these professions are dealing with life and death decisions, often made under highly stressful and emotionally charged situations. In these careers, where people are held accountable for such weighty choices it is no surprise that a lot of thinking has gone into good decision making.

The Military Decision Making Process of the United States Army) and the UK Military Combat Estimate Process (known as the Seven Questions are examples of these sorts of tools that share much in common and reflect the seven steps outlined above.

But the challenge I bring to leaders in all walks of life is this: even if a decision you make is not likely to be life or death, it can still radically affect the quality of people’s lives, as well as the success and profitability of an organisation. So is it any less important to make good decisions in other spheres of work?

What decision making processes are there to use?

The good news is, that even if you have not had formal decision-making training, there is help available. There are plenty of robust decision-making processes and tools around, it is just choosing the best one for you, your team and your situation.

A good starting point is understanding decision making at its most basic and for this I would recommend looking at the OODA loop. OODA stands for ‘Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act’ and you can learn more about it in my post on ‘The OODA Loop Decision Making Cycle.’

My experience as a Bomb Disposal Officer, leadership coach and management consultant led me to develop my own decision-making process that I dubbed ‘The Right Questions’. This is a simple tool that uses the interrogative words of the English language as prompts for the steps you need to take and questions you need to ask when making decisions. You can find out more by reading ‘The Right Questions Framework Guide.‘

Is decision making just for leaders?

Decision making is becoming of increasing importance to those not in traditional leadership roles. Organisations are becoming less hierarchical in structure and in today’s fluid and fast moving work place the best employees are those who can take the initiative, make and act upon good decisions.

Therefore everyone can benefit from understanding more about the way we make decisions and from learning simple decision making processes.

And as we have seen, good decision making is not just important in the work place. We all have to make decisions that affect the direction of our lives. This is why as a coach I have found that processes, such as The Right Questions, can be equally as helpful in exploring the bigger questions of life.

Where are you heading? What do you want to achieve? How are you planning to get there?

If you are interest in exploring these questions at a personal level then just subscribe to my newsletter and you will get a free goal setting workbook and personal action plan. Just sign up here!

Taking things further

You may want also want some help, improving your decision-making and becoming more effective at achieving your goals. I have the pleasure of seeing amazing, positive, transformations in the individuals and organisations I work with. If you would like some assistance too, in person or online, then please do drop me a line. You can email me via the contact page.

I look forward to hearing from you!