7 effective ways to make better Business Decisions

In both our professional and personal life, we are constantly challenged with making the right decision.  Every entrepreneur desires  to make better business decisions, here are a few tips that could help you make quicker and better business decisions.

1. Make decisions in the light of your values.Each successful business has a set of values, that provides a framework for staff to make decisions. So, when making a decision, keep only those options on the table, that align with your company’s value sets. This narrows the options to those that can be considered. As an Entrepreneur/Business owner, in case, you have not yet defined the values for your organization, you might want to spend some time to flush them out.

   “It’s not hard to make decisions once you know what your values are.”
   – Roy Disney

2. Seek expert advice

   An “expert” here being the right person, a person with knowledge and experience. Business Coach, Industry expert could be great options to explore.
   Expert Advice may be sought in person if you have the right connections. If not, research would be the next best thing to fall back on.

3. Mind MappingMind mapping is a visual technique to organize ideas and information. The product of mind mapping is called a mind map which is a diagram, representing a central topic branching out to subtopics that elaborate the central subject, in this case, a decision to be made. This tool is used to generate, visualize and structure ideas and aids decision making and problem-solving, by providing the user with a base to see the big picture. Mind maps can help you visualize and document all connected information to a decision, and will guide your analysis of the situation, with clear documentation of pros, cons, risks, resources and outcomes.
4. Ask “what if” a lotIf you have multiple paths to a solution it is good to question each to fully understand its consequences and risks. By doing so, we consider all possible future occurrences and arriving at options that best fit our requirements. Therefore, making better decisions.
5. Listen to your intuitionOnce you have your options in front of you that are at par on all accounts, go with what feels right. Trust your gut.
6. Beware of cognitive biasesBiases can be pretty dangerous: they cloud our judgment.
   The two biases that affect your decision-making process the most are the self-serving bias and the confirmation bias.

   Self-serving bias is the tendency to credit all good things that happen to us to our efforts, and every bad thing happening to us to the outside world. This prevents us from learning from our past failures hence cultivates the tendency to make the same mistake again.
   Confirmation bias is the tendency to only look for and consider information that confirms our beliefs, instead of exploring both sides of the situation.
   Just consciously paying attention to these biases can help you massively improve your ability to make good decisions.

   “When you make decisions, those decisions make you.” – makesuccesspossible

7. Learn from your past decisionsReflect upon past decisions:-
   – Ones that went well – what made them good decisions
   – Decisions that went bad – what step was missed that caused the decision to turn out to be a sour one.
   Weave in that learning in your current cycle.