Now that the end of 2018 is near I hope you’ve taken time to reflect on the hard work you put into your businesses this year and felt gratitude for the results. It’s time to look forward to 2019 and the promise every new year brings.
You’ll want to analyze what will help move your business forward and what goals to set. Perhaps you’ll need to make tough decisions about new strategies to try or old strategies to abandon. Changing direction isn’t easy, but it’s important to recognize when things aren’t going as you’d hoped. Making decisions about your business can feel overwhelming so it’s tempting to procrastinate or even “decide not to decide” until you get more information or get advice from someone or devise some other reason to delay making a decision.
The truth is, you know your business better than anyone else, and being objective about what works and what doesn’t isn’t admitting failure. It’s simply recognizing that there’s no one “right” way to run a business. There’s only trial and error. And you need to have a game plan in place before January 1, ready to do whatever it takes to reach your goals.
Sometimes when it’s hard to decide what to do it can be helpful to have a proven strategy to guide you in your efforts. Luckily the academics at UMass Dartmouth have outlined 7 Steps to Effective Decision Making:
- Identify the Decision
- Identify the problem so you can clearly define the nature of the decision you must make.
- Gather Information
- Collect relevant facts from a variety of reliable sources before you try to make a decision.
- Identify Alternatives
- Don’t jump on the first solution you run across. Consult with others who have faced similar situations. Get a full range of possibilities.
- Weigh the Evidence
- What has worked in the past? What hasn’t worked and why? What is unique about your situation that you need to consider.
- Choose Among Alternatives
- In practical terms, what can you actually do? What will the various alternatives cost in time/money/effort?
- Take Action
- Make the best call you can given the information you have and the time constraints you’re working under.
- Review Your Decision
- Few decisions are irrevocable. If implementing your decision achieves the results you’re looking for, great! If not, try something else!
In your day-to-day decision-making, there are two situations I want you to avoid:
- Analysis paralysis
It’s easy to get stuck here, thinking that more research, more information, more thinking about it will result in your arriving at the one “right” decision. In almost all cases, there are many ways to solve a problem. Deciding on any one of them and implementing it the best way you can given the circumstances, is better than doing nothing. “If you want something different… you need to do something different.”
- Decision fatigue
There’s a limit to how much our brains can process. Making decisions can be hard work, making lots of decisions wears out our brain’s capacity to function properly. By creating a daily work structure with habits and routines that reduce the number of decisions you have to make each day, you will make better decisions. Some people resist creating routines and habits because they mistakenly think those things will compromise their creativity. The opposite is true. When your mind doesn’t have to make a decision about every little thing all day long, it’s free to be truly creative in solving problems and accomplishing the important tasks throughout the day.
One of the most mind-freeing habits you can establish is to schedule your days in advance using Action Block Calendaring (ABC)™. When you awake each day, you already know what lies ahead. You don’t have to think your way through everything that needs to be done, you can just get straight to doing it! And your brain will have plenty of creative energy available to make decisions about anything unexpected that arises.
If you’d like help with the decisions you’re facing in 2019 and/or would like to find out how to implement a daily work structure that will help you make good, confident decisions, give me a call and we can get started!
