My job sometimes pays for me to attend trainings, and one of these was “Problem Solving and Decision Making” by Kepner-Tregoe. Here’s what stayed with me of the decision making process they taught. I use this whenever I have a significant decision to make, especially if I’m making it with other people. I also cherry-pick bits of this in meetings.

Outline:

Decision Statement
Criteria and Objectives
Options
Risks
Decision

Instructions:

Write down a Decision Statement. What are you making a decision about? Be detailed, this helps you clarify the scope. Note down any options that are already in your head, but know there will be a step for that later.

List your Criteria and Objectives. Criteria are must-haves, such that any decision absolutely must fulfill all of them. Objectives are what you are trying to achieve with the decision. What will you judge the Options against? What makes one better than another? Take time for this step, as you might discover ones you were not aware of.

Prioritize your Objectives. Ask “Which of these is more important to me?” and “If I can only have one, which would that be?” You can use any method you like, such as sorting or assigning numbers, as long as it forces you choose between your Objectives.

List all the realistic Options. Brainstorm if you like. Try to get it all out, but it doesn’t have to be a final list.

Score each Option against each Criterion and Objective. For the Criteria only ask if it’s fulfilled or not. For the Objectives ask “if I were to choose this, how well would it fulfill this specific Objective?”. Then strike the Options which don’t fulfill all Criteria. Sort the remaining ones based on how well they fulfill the most important Objectives.

Evaluate risks. For the top few contenders, ask “what are the risks if I go with this choice?” and note down the risks you identify. Further ask yourself if you’re willing to accept that risk. If no, scratch the choice.

List mitigation strategies and contingency plans. For the risks you are able to accept, ask “What can I do to reduce the probablity of it, or its impact?” Note that down.

Make your decision and document it. If you’ve gone through all the above, you have a solid basis to make a decision. Whatever you choose, write down your decision in a full statement. It should detail what you chose, what you decided against, based on what objectives, what risks you identified, and what you aim to do about them. This will be helpful to come back to as you implement your decision and you - or others - start questioning it.

Tips and tricks

This looks like a linear process but it’s not. I find myself jumping back and forth between the steps, because each one possibly triggers new thoughts and understanding of the previous ones. I don’t fight that. I go back, add my additional understanding in the form of a new Objective, a change in priorities, or changing a must-have Critierion to a good-to-have Objective.

This process is effective but clearly engages your higher functions. Don’t waste it on trivial decisions, or ones where you can probably just pick a good choice based on intuition. Devote the proper time. While it can get lengthy if you treat it seriously, and if you’re doing it for the first few times, the different steps provide natural places to pause. If you do this in a group, have people pre-populate their thoughts ahead of time, so time in the meeting can be utilized for discussion and not watching each other type.

Your list of Options might grow, and you might feel there are many variations on one Option. One way to deal with this is to cluster your Options, or break them up into scenarios. Again, remember nonlinearity - it’s perfectly fine to keep updating the list, changing formulations, and so on, many many times.

Skip any part you feel is worthless. The value here is in making you think of things you didn’t realize, not to force some perfect process on you.

Summary

This process has improved the quality of decisions I’ve made, and raised the level of discussions. I hope it can be useful to others. Please let me know how it works for you!