Art of Decision Making

What is Decision Making?

Decision making can be regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.

Decision making is an Art. We take numerous decisions on day to day basis in our personal and professional life using one the decision making styles mentioned above. Right from what time to get up in the morning to what time to sleep is the result of decisions which we take.

In corporate world, we all keep hearing that, person should have an ability to make quick and appropriate decisions to become effective contributor in his role and for organization.

All my fellow colleagues from HR, engaged in Leadership Hiring or Talent Acquisition will agree to this that, When we draw a Job Description for a leadership and many other positions, we do write that a person should have an ability to make quick decisions. This is important; however, I think this is a halo effect on all of us. Whenever we think of decision making, we all expect quick decisions. We all expect a quick decision from our leaders/managers on all our problems and issues.

A person should be able to make quick decisions, but not in all scenarios you can take quick decisions resulting into desired output.

At times deliberate procrastination helps. Many of us understand procrastination as postpone or delay needlessly. However, at times deliberate procrastination in decision making is very helpful. In certain scenarios your last minute decisions helps you to produce desired output. For example, in the game of cricket, batsman at last minute decides how to hit the ball and in which direction, this helps him to get desired output. Now imagine if he takes a decision well in advance to hit the ball in particular direction or playing a particular shot before receiving the delivery, what are the chances here to produce the desired output?

Taking decision by predetermining and assuming things is a risk and you are not sure about the output. Risk taking is also important, but one should understand that, a person cannot be lucky always.

In above example a batsman may be able to produce desired output by taking risk, however there is a chance of loosing wicket quickly, if he keeps assuming how the bowler will ball and keeps deciding his shots in advance. For batsman it is important to delay the decision of hitting the ball to last minute, so that he can choose appropriate shot by understanding the delivery. This is makes him more effective player.

Similarly, in many work and personal life scenarios delaying decision helps to achieve the desired output/result.

The other fact of decision making is, we almost make all our decision at last minute. We deliberately delay the decision making, as many of us are risk averse and want to play safe. Do not waste too much time in to analysing the situation and the output of your decision, this results into less effective work environment, as delaying decisions needlessly, makes you and other people dependent to act after your decision less effective and productive in their work. So, for me making quick decisions or delaying decisions is not of prime importance, as if both are performed in less effective manner will hamper the overall productivity. It is important to have knowledge and understanding of the Art of Making effective & timely decisions.

We know, all scenarios cannot be similar and hence time taken for decision making varies. The essence is to understand the situation and take decisions. At times you have to be quick and at time you can procrastinate, but in both scenarios you should come out as an effective decision maker. By analysing, foreseeing, conceptualizing, being flexible, pro-active, procrastinating you can become an effective decision maker.

During the interview process, an interviewer should focus on evaluating candidates on their ability and understanding to make decisions by understanding their normative and behavioral pattern of decision making and not how quick a person can make decisions. Ultimately, we only complicate and create situation with our procrastinating behavior, where quick decisions are required later on. The focus should be given on the ability of an individual to analyze the situation and provide effective and timely solutions, because decisions are nothing but solutions and guidance to the problem/issues/situations.