Making Good Decisions
Avoiding decision making is one of the biggest time wasters around. In a good percentage of the cases, any decision is better than none. To go to the left or to the right or to conscientiously stand still is better than standing at the intersection in indecision. A 50 percent average in making good decisions is an excellent record. There are many people who may not be excellent problem solvers, but they're good decision makers. They have the courage to analyze the facts quickly, make a decision, and then learn from and live with the results. Many times such decision makers will outperform the problem solvers just because the decision makers keep things moving.
Divide and conquer
Benjamin Franklin is quoted as having told the Continental Congress, €œIf we don't hang together, we'll hang separately. € He recognized that the easiest way to overcome opposition is one by one.
There's a basic principle at work here that can be used over and over. Almost any problem may seem too big for us to handle, but when we break it down into its parts, it doesn't appear so formidable.
Projects and problems can be divided and conquered in a number of ways:
- In time we can break them down to each step needed to reach the goal, steps that are small enough to take. Take that first step.
- Functionally we can break them down by the different types of tasks to be done. Perhaps we can do one of those.
- Strategically we can break them down until we identify the person or one action that is the key to further unlocking the problem.
- In terms of goals we can break them down into subgoals and decide which are obtainable now.
- Geographically we may divide them so we can cover each part systematically.
Next time you are stopped in your tracks by a mountain of a problem, try dividing it and conquering it, molehill by molehill. It works.
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