Articles that can provide insight and add to your decision making strategies

All decisions are not created equal. The value and complexity of decisions can vary widely, providing significant opportunity for mistakes. Add in differences in personality and style, and it becomes clear that having multiple decision making strategies readily available can increase personal and group effectiveness.

Following are some of our popular articles from our Connected Decisions newsletter that can help address a broader range of decision environments.

Common decision traps, errors, and mistakes

There are a number of errors and traps that often occur during the process of making decisions. These articles help you recognize these errors and identify solutions that can help prevent them, or minimize their impact.

• Decision timing is a key factor in getting the most value from your decision making efforts. Need to determine when to decide? Here is information that can help.
• This article lists a remarkably long list of common thinking errors made when deciding. While not exhaustive, it can cause one to wonder how anyone can make an effective decision. It wouldn't be fair to leave you with just a long list of problems, so read to the end for some techniques that can help you avoid these thinking errors, particularly when making important decisions.
• With the third installment of our series on decision making errors and traps, we take a quick look at Groupthink theory and the problems it implies for group decision making.
• Procrastination can create chaos in our lives, affecting our success both personally and professionally. Indecisiveness, or delayed decision timing is often attributed to procrastination. In this article we explore how the connected decisions framework can be used to help overcome procrastination.

Strategies, approaches, and special decision situations

Recognizing unique differences in the decision environment can point to the need for different strategies to achieve desired outcomes. These decision making articles suggest improvement opportunities that enable adaptability to specific circumstances.

• Individual decision making is influenced by a number of factors, including personality. In this article we take a look at some decision making approaches to explore how we individually make decisions. Knowing our decision making style can lead to insights for increasing success.
• Decisions affect everything we do and all aspects of our lives. Sometimes those important decisions are made by someone else. In this piece we look at ways to influence decision making, and how to detect and avoid manipulation by us and others.
• Recent events have created a heightened level of uncertainty that can influence both our personal and business decision making. In this popular newsletter, we take a closer look at decision making in uncertainty, and provide some ideas for dealing with choices during uncertain times.
• Connected Decisions has generally focused on large value decisions that can often be complex and have significant consequences. This article addresses small decisions that can lead to unintended consequences in order to consider how they might be addressed in the larger decision framework.
• We often confront complexity in the process of making decisions. Is there a point at which complexity overwhelms our ability to make an effective choice? In this article we look at complexity and its relationship to the speed of decision making.
• Facts used to support decision making are critical to effective choices. This piece on evidence based decision making focuses on the use (and misuse) of information when trying to improve outcomes.
• Medical technology advances have enabled new research into how the brain works. Some of this study has focused on what happens in the brain when we make decisions in a social context. Take a quick look at some of the insights coming from this research.
• Judgment and decision making are often considered together. Is sound judgment a talent, a personality trait, or a skill? Are some people naturally gifted with the ability to make better choices? In this article we investigate judgment to help determine its role in achieving better decision outcomes.
• In times of great change and uncertainty, the amount of time spent on thinking through and making decisions increases. Here we explore the topic of decision fatigue to develop approaches that could help avoid a loss in effectiveness.

Managing Change

Decisions start the change process. This set of articles on decision making show how managing decisions can help manage the change needed to make complex, high value decisions succeed.

• Significant change requires making new decisions. See how the Connected Decisions framework can be used as a change management model, getting at the heart of what leads to productive transformation.

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