How to Improve your Decision-Making

This may surprise you, but most great leaders use the same 5 steps for making decisions. So read the 5 steps below and use them to improve your decision-making on projects:

Investigate the problem

When a problem is presented to you, take the first step by spending the time needed to identify its root cause and make sure it's not just a symptom of another underlying problem. Project problems are usually related to people, processes, equipment or materials. Find out when, why and how it occurred and its impact on the project.

Prioritize it

On projects, problems occur all the time. You need to determine whether each problem needs your urgent attention or not, based on its impact on the project. If it's high impact (e.g. it's preventing your team from working) then it's "high priority" and you need to stop work and get it resolved quickly.

Identify the solutions

With a clear understanding of the problem and its priority level, you need to identify solutions to address it. Then review each alternative to determine whether it actually:

Solves the root cause of the problem
Is easy and practical to implement
Will prevent the problem from re-occurring
Make your decision

Now you have all of the information you need to make your decision. Don't make your decisions too hastily. Take time out of your day to carefully consider all of the pros and cons. Go for a walk, or if it's really important sleep on it so you have a clear head when deciding. Make non-important decisions quickly, but take a little more time when making decisions which are critical to the success of the project.

Act on it

Once you have thought it through and made your decision, you need to be fully committed to implementing it. Act on it immediately by telling your team about it and then scheduling the tasks needed to make it happen. Remember, every problem affects your project in some way, so you need to act quickly once you've decided on what to do.

If you follow these steps for every decision you have to make, then you'll make better decisions, faster. And you'll feel good about it.

One way to reduce the number of decisions you have to make on projects, is to use a Project Methodology. It will guide your entire team through a proven step-by-step process, so that everyone knows what has to be done. So you don't have to decide how you want to run your projects. You simply follow the methodology to do it.