Why are decisions important?

Decision making is the act of making up our mind about something, leading to the selection of a course of action or an opinion.  There has to be an objective and two or more ways of satisfying the objective.

If you’re reading this page, there’s a good chance that either you are making hard decisions, or you expect to be.  The difficulty with decision making is knowing a good decision from a bad one.  The outcomes of the decision feel disconnected from the decision itself.  You can spend a great deal of time and effort to make the perfect decision and get the worst possible result, likewise you can make a very poor decision like investing all of your pension fund on a horse race and walk away as a millionaire.  Consequently, there is often a lack of impetus to change our decision making ways.

The progress of our organisation can be seen as a series of decisions.  Each decision builds on the previous decisions, opening some opportunities and closing other opportunities potentially forever. Right decisions usually conclude an issue, but wrong decisions call for more and more decisions in order to rectify the mistake of the initial decision.  Improving our decision making might not pay significant rewards for any individual decision, but over time it will result in a significantly improved situation for our organisations and ourselves.  Making a good decision does not necessarily lead to a good outcome, there are often influences that are uncertain at the time of making the decision, but poor decision making usually guarantees a bad outcome. 

Decisions are a responsibility.  We should face them the same as any other responsibilities, because right decisions relieve us of many problems whereas wrong decisions only compound our problems.  When a problem or decision presents itself, we need to make the best decision possible.  Sometimes we need to make a split-second decision, but more often we have time to consider our options.  If we get a clear insight into what we want to achieve, what our values and objectives are, then our decisions will come easier than when we have no idea of what we want to do or where we want to go.

Many decisions we make are based on our knowledge and experience, as well as our nature.  If we have no knowledge or experience we need to seek out someone who has and get their expert advice.  The higher we rise in our company or societal hierarchy the more critical our decisions become, because they often affect the lives of many others. 

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