28-08-2012, 03:22 PM
Making Smart Choices
Making Smart.ppt (Size: 161 KB / Downloads: 211)
Decision Making - A Fundamental Life Skill
Making good decisions is one of the most important factors that determines how well you meet your responsibilities and achieve your personal and professional goals
Learning how to make good decisions is therefore a fundamental life skill
You can practice and improve this skill by learning a good decision making process (emphasizing how you decide, not what you decide)
Objectives: The Basics
Objectives play a central role in decision making (“value-focused thinking”)
If you don’t care, you don’t have a problem
If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere else
Objectives guide all phases of the decision making process (including what information to seek and what other people to involve)
Let Your Objectives Be Your Guide
The process of thinking through and writing down your objectives goes a long way towards making a smart choice
Objectives help you determine what information to seek
Objectives can help you explain your choice to others
Objectives determine a decision’s importance and, consequently, how much time and effort it deserves
The Art of Identifying Objectives
Step 1: Write down all the concerns you hope to address through your decision
Step 2: Convert your concerns into succinct objectives
Step 3: Separate ends from means to establish your fundamental objectives
Step 4: Clarify what you mean by each objective
Step 5: Test your objectives to see if they capture your interests
Techniques to Identify Objectives
Use a wish list
Think about alternatives
Imagine possible consequences
Describe problems and shortcomings
Identify goals, constraints and guidelines
Use different perspectives
Think about strategic objectives
Ask ‘why’ for each objective
Do individual thinking first
Goals and Constraints
A goal sets a level or a standard with respect to a particular objective
Example: make $50 million next year
A constraint is also a standard used to screen out unacceptable alternatives
Example: insure per unit cost is less than $900
Organize Objectives
Means Objective: an objective whose importance stems from its contributions to achieving another objective.
Fundamental Objective: objective that defines a basic reason for caring about a decision.
Example:
Means Objective - arrive home from work early
Fundamental Objective - make my spouse happy
Fundamental Objectives Hierarchy
Fundamental objectives can be structured in a hierarchy
The most general objective is at the top
Lower-level objectives explain the meaning of upper-level objectives
Achievement of the lowest-level objectives can be measured using “attributes” to describe and evaluate the various alternatives