Becoming a Better Decision Maker

Funny, isn’t it. One of the most important activities that we undertake on a daily basis is to make decisions. Yet, how many of us have ever been trained in making decisions?

Reflect on the important decisions you have made over your life, or even ones made in the past few days. Do you ever think that you could have made better decisions if you just knew how? Do you ever wish your children made better decisions?

Are you facing a difficult decision today and don’t know how to begin, or worried that the decision you end up making might not be the best one you can make?

The purpose of the Decision Empowerment Institute is to help everyone – parents, children, grandparents, couples, young adults and working adults, learn how to become a better decision maker. So let’s begin.

What is Decision Empowerment?

Empowerment has two parts: first, it means having the authority to decide (what we call decision equity) as well as the responsibility for the outcome and consequences of a decision. The second part of empowerment is providing the means to equip or supply someone with an ability or capability to do something.

Therefore, to truly empower someone to make a decision is to mean that we have given them, first, the capability to make a decision, and then, second, granted the authority and responsibility to make the decision. The two – for instance, parents creating the capability in their children and then transferring the authority to their children – are inseparable in principle; but, unfortunately, almost always disconnected in practice.

Sometimes children are expected to make decisions beyond their capability, or sometimes parents don’t give children enough authority to make decisions. This results in decision impoverishment, where children never learn how to make decisions on their own.

Young adults sometimes find the same problem when they first enter the workforce. It is not uncommon today for young adults to find themselves in situations where they are asked to make difficult decisions that, if not well thought out, can damage their future prospects.

Even grandparents are faced with issues of decision empowerment. While as adults, they may have total authority to make decisions, but they are often faced with hard decisions that outstrip their decision capability. For instance, what Medicare Plan B program should they select that provides the best value given scarce financial resources? Following a good decision process can help tremendously to make the best decision possible.

What is a Decision?

Simply put, a decision is a commitment of something of value (e.g., time or money). By saying a decision is a commitment, we mean that an explicit course of action has been chosen implying that we have forgone other possible courses of action. The bottom line is if there is no commitment of a resource, then there is no decision.

It also means that once we make a decision, it will cost something to undo it.

We want to learn how to make the best possible decisions so we have to as few decision “do overs” as possible, but also learn when we actually need to change a previously made decision.

What Makes Up a Decision?

Decisions consist of four components: (1) choices, (2) information, (3) values/preferences, and (4) consequences.

1. Choices include the set of various alternatives that we have to choose from;
2. Information includes the facts and events (both certain and uncertain) that affect our choices and how we value consequences;
3. Values and Preferences include the various types of value that are important to us along with our personal preferences for these types of value and our preferences about risk.
4. Finally, we apply our values and preferences to consequences of our decisions.

What Makes for a Quality Decision?

1. There are five attributes of a quality decision, meaning a decision that has the best likelihood of resulting in a desired outcome.
2. We focused on the right issues that led to the right decision to focus on and then considered significantly different choices associated with that decision.
3. The information we used to make the decision was correct and helped us think about important consequences (both favorable and unfavorable).
4. We understood and considered our personal values and preferences for each of the potential consequences.
5. We compared the choices so that the one we selected was better than any of the others available to us.
6. We committed to the decision we made, and carried it out.

Empowerment and Decision Equity

To be fully empowered to make a decision means having complete decision equity. Decision equity can be thought of as decision ownership and control – who “owns” the decision, including its outcome. Full or 100 percent decision equity – i.e., decision empowerment – means enjoying both the individual freedom and authority to make a decision but also fully accepting the responsibility for the consequences of the decision.

For an individual, anything less than being empowered to make a decision means that at least one other person is involved in the decision in terms of commitment, authority and responsibility.

For parents, determining the appropriate “decision equity share” to be held by your child is something that should be carefully considered. Used judiciously, decision equity can be your child’s bridge from decision impoverishment to decision empowerment.

For individuals, ask what your equity is in the decisions you face. Sometimes the uneasiness with a decision is that the equity amount is unbalanced, meaning that you have too little or too much decision equity for the decision. Part of learning good decision making is to find the proper balance of decision equity.

Finding the proper balance of decision equity is one of the most difficult problem couples face when they first get together or later get married, and is often the cause of relationships going sour. Couples make decisions together, so talking openly about decision equity is vital for a healthy relationship.

For grandparents, decision equity takes on new forms, and can be very stressful. For instance, who has the power to make decisions if one or the other spouse gets sick, incapacitated, or can’t take care of themselves properly. This question is one that vexes all families, and as the population ages, will become more important to think through properly so everyone is happy with the decisions being made.

The FIVE-to-Decide Conversation

Becoming a good decision maker requires skills and a process you can rely on over the breadth of your decision making opportunities. The FIVE-to-Decide Conversation is such a step-by-step process that enables parents and teachers to teach children of all ages to make high quality decisions. It is also a process that individual can teach themselves to improve their own decision making, one that you can use and rely on throughout your life.

The steps to FIVE-to-Decide Conversation can be counted off on one hand: (1) Focus; (2) Information; (3) Value; (4) Evaluate; and, (5) Decide. The Five-to-Decide Conversation process will be the same for everyone, but the emphasis changes based on who is making the decision and the situation they find themselves faced with.