Decision making is a critical part of solving complex problems. In theory, it happens after framing the problem and exploring options and criteria, in the form of a climax where the fundamental components of the process—the question you’re answering, the…
Have you lost your dog? Here are some ideas that can help you find him/her. When I teach strategic thinking to solve problems, I use a case study along the semester to help students relate ideas to a concrete situation. The…
Confirmation bias—seeking and interpreting evidence partially so as to support one’s beliefs—is so destructive that it can render your analysis useless. And chances are, you are a victim of it. Raymond Nickerson, a psychology professor at Tufts University, found evidence…
Decision making is a critical part of the problem-solving process. But it is also only that: a part. The process has several others; don’t overlook some at the expense of others. (This post is a summary of a guest article I did…
In any organization, it is frequent to have a set way to make decisions, call it culture. That can be useful, but it can also be problematical. You should learn to recognize when it is to your advantage to reject the…
Problem solving is about bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Decision making is identifying the path you want to follow in bridging that gap. In that sense, decision making is part of the…
Once you’ve identified several potential solutions for your problem, you need to choose at least one. To help you, consider comparing their expected value. To do that, you evaluate whether you can and want to implement this solution. Test whether you can…
To identifying solutions you must -1- identify all the possible solutions for your problem and -2- rank them. To rank them, you need to compare them; decision matrices are a handy tool to do that. To build a decision matrix,…