FIVE-to-Decide™

Your feelings are good at telling you there is a decision that needs to be made—even if the act of making a decision is not foremost in your mind. If you are feeling a sense of anxiety, there is a good chance an important decision is looming. Problems, risks, and opportunities arise as life happens. Wouldn’t you like to have a solid, proven approach to lean on to get through the decision making.

The FIVE-to-Decide Conversation is a step-by-step process that enables you to learn how to make high quality decisions. 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.

Make sure you visit DEI Press and check out our latest publication, “Decision Empowerment: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Good Decision Makers” for a detailed discussion of each individual dialogue listed on this website and how to conduct each in practice.

Also, don’t forget to check our downloads page for the latest in useful information. In addition, consider taking our decision behavior diagnostic (link) to learn about which behaviors you may have that keep you and others from making good decisions.

Focus

You need to consider different perspectives on what is the decision to be made before agreeing on the specific decision to focus on. That is, you need to decide on what the right decision is. Once the decision is clearly defined, identify the distinctly and significantly different alternatives you feel should be considered (i.e., the choices to involve) in the subsequent dialogues that will lead to the decision. Creating a list of compelling choices is the ultimate goal of this dialogue. Getting the decision focus right will help ensure you address the right issues, solve the right problems, and consider all of the best possibilities.

Information

You need to identify and understand the issues, concerns, and questions that make the decision hard to make. Answering the question, “why is the decision easy or hard to make?” will uncover the information critical to making the decision and will illuminate the issues of value that need to be addressed (later, in the Value Dialogue). Ultimately, issues must be classified as either: (1) an assumption; (2) an uncertainty; or, (3) value-related.

Value

You need to identify what types of value should be included in making the decision.

Value Types

• Enjoyment (Fun)
• Health
• Safety
• Education
• Family Quality Time
• Charity
• Pain
• Money
• Personal Fulfillment
• Time
• Other (ex. Environmental)

Evaluate

The essence of this dialogue is to evaluate each of the alternatives and understand why the highest scoring alternative is preferred to all other alternatives- the “value story”. Ultimately, this dialogue must answer the question, “Is there one alternative that is clearly the best choice?”

Decide

You need to determine whether you are: (1) ready to make the decision; (2) need to reconsider the decision; or, (3) need to wait for additional information before making the decision.

Decisions You May Want to Make Using FIVE-to-Decide:

• Making a Career Change
• Returning to Work
• Fixing versus Buying a Car
• Insurance Coverage
• Investments
• Buying a Home
• Place to Live
• Vacation Destination

Downloads

We need to decide how to handle downloads – all one page with again links to specific elements per group, or as examples in each (there is an additional page for that right now) or both.