At companies like Apple and Google, almost half of all their work is wasted because of wrong decisions. If people could change their decision in the past 10 years, 50% of them would be very successful today. For those who run their own companies, it is very normal that more than half of the decisions they have made in the past were not the best choices. There are ways to help you to make better decisions. Let’s focus on decision making questions of start-up companies today.
If you always make decisions yourself, your knowledge would be the ceiling of the quality of the decisions. If you have a good system, all the team’s knowledge combined would be the ceiling. In this case, you have more chances to make better decisions than yourself.
- Try to collect as many possible options as you can
An important step in decision-making is the global search for as many options as you can. The possible options should be far more than we already know, but some options we can’t see or don’t see at all.
Possibilities lists and brainstorming are great ways to help people find more possibilities. Asking yourself a few more whys, multiple aspects, from multiple angles, multiple dimensions, changing perspectives and other steps will greatly increase your options. Brainstorming is a method that everyone has heard of, but there are many skills in operation, which need to be studied carefully before you can do it well.
- Analyze the options
Decision-making systems are generally divided into single-objective and multi-objective decision-making. Multi-objective decision-making will undoubtedly sacrifice some conditions to meet the conditions of another objective. The most harmful thing in decision making is the so-called interfering factors such as other’s feelings.
Only real problems and real influencing factors will bring real benefits. All irrelevant and false factors will increase the waste.
- Decision-making is not multiple-choice questions in the exam
Most decisions are made with very little known and most unknown factors, and there is a lot of luck involved. This is completely different from the multiple choice questions in our exams. There is always a correct answer to the multiple-choice questions in the exam, but we have to consider the percentage of the correct possibilities when making a real decision in running a company. It is live and needs to be reviewed and adjusted frequently according to the development of the situations later. In decision-making, option A may bring you a 20% to 60% probability of success, while option B may bring you a 10% to 80% probability of success. And these percentage figures may also be inaccurate due to human factors. How do you make decisions? ?
If you don’t collect enough options, you may miss many good options, or many options are not suitable for your conditions, then the possibility of making a correct decision will be greatly reduced.
- Decision making method
After completing the above analysis and list, the decision-making process should be fully discussed, paying attention to everyone’s options, especially opposing options. The six thinking hats decision making system is one of the best decision-making methods. It allows people to consider and analyze problems from different angles, and then make decisions.
Of course, the reliability-weighted decision-making method made by Bridgewater Fund is the ultimate decision-making system. This method is more suitable for decision-making on complex problems. Not all companies can use it well because many people cannot stand such a cruel operation process.
In short, there is no fixed way to do business, every decision is a brand new thing. Therefore, we must understand the deep meaning of “refer to the ways somebody has done but always adjust it according to your own situations.”
Nobody can guarantee to just make the right decisions. We are very happy to share our thoughts, learn and improve each other together. Please contact us!