This will make you a good decision maker

It is very gratifying to understand that everything about and round you is an end result of your own selection of choices and decisions about those choices. Your “decisions” are the bridge between your mind and your movements.

Every day we make decision, big and small ,  from simple decisions “to get up when the alarm rings in the morning or to snooze it for another 15 mins” or to decide “if this outfit goes with the people I am going to meet today in the meetings” the entirety you do is an end result of a decision.

The rational decision-making process consists of a sequence of steps designed to rationally develop a desired solution. Typically, these steps involve:

Identify a problem or opportunity

Gather information

Analyze the situation

Develop options

Evaluate alternatives

Select a preferred alternative

Act on the decision

Yesterday I was meeting with an old friend Yunus Saiyed over evening tea at a local joint as we waited for his son’s skating classes to be over and what amazed me was his ability to transform everyday problems, which we mention as a matter of fact routine conversations, into opportunities for creating solutions for the community. He had amazing stories to share from his experiences, whether it was the non-availability of laundry services in the vicinity of his house or the lack of creative skill development center for kids in a off-city center location. He had come up with solutions in an enterprising way to create opportunities for service to the community. The reason I mention it here is because of his unique ability of taking decisions on the spur of the moment whenever he hears someone complaining about a situation.

I believe we all have this innate ability to do the same and not many of us use to its full potential. One way to make decisions is as Mr. Waseem Safdar mentions it in this video , “You can alter the course of your life at any given moment… Start making conscious decisions.” Another process I advocate with my coaching clients is wherein I ask them to first create a constructive environment around them, investigate the situation at the core, generate few viable options and explore each of them to select the best one, evaluate that option with a practical plan and then the most important part is to “TAKE ACTION”.

While it may seem to be a straightforward process, the last bit of taking action is the most important bit. And just to end it on a somewhat lighter note, If you would like to spend the next 6 mins watching this Ted Talk on Three lessons on decision making from a Poker Champion , interestingly enough, you could end up with knowing the role that Luck ,Probability and Intuition play in your decision making.