How do you arrive at your decision? There are many types of decision making styles… which describes you? Do you laboriously consider each and every option and ramification? Do you, after asking a number of people, accept the ‘majority’ opinion? Perhaps you adopt the ‘fly by the seat of the pants’ approach Do you take a serendipitous approach, adhering to the belief that ‘everything will work out’… regardless of whether or not you do anything? Or maybe you take a I-won’t-make-a -decision-so-I-don’t-have-any-responsibility-for-what-happens?
And the preferred style: the person who analyzes the situation and looks for options and ramifications and then makes a ‘timely’ decision. Ideally we would use our foresight. But… no one has it so we’re all on an even playing field. Some of us seem to have more intuition then others, but maybe it’s more that some are more observant or listen to that ‘inner voice’ and follow it more often than others.
I do wish I had foresight… but then, life wouldn’t be such an adventure if I did. However, we would probably have less scraped knees. Since we don’t have foresight – what can we do? I’ve always thought that developing a critical thinking approach to decision making would be the preferred method. I still do. But, if you are a critical thinker then you can’t use the excuse of innocence/I didn’t know – this tends to be the drawback. For me, it’s worth that price.
Regardless, even critical thinkers have to take a position at some point. How you present your stand is nearly as important as your stand. It is important that you remain flexible in order to take in new data. It’s also important that you make your decision confidently, knowing you’ve done all you can to arrive at the best possible decision. The final step of monitoring what’s happening as a result of the decision becomes the most critical step – this step can assure success because it’s a relevant to what is actually happening thus allowing for adjustments.
…but, what do you think?
