How To Make Quick Open-Minded Smart Decisions Everyday Using The Smart Decision Toolkit

Importance of Decision Making: Decisions are important because they influence/determine your personal, community or organization’s reality, and therefore it is imperative for you to make smart decisions in order to get the best outcomes.

What is a Decision: According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a decision is a determination (conclusion) arrived at after consideration.

What determines the quality of Decisions: Decisions are anchored on a person’s ability to THINK or process/interpret information towards decision making.

Thinking simply refers to the open-minded and objective processing of information towards effective decision making and informed action.

If you do not understand the meaning of the words, information and communication, you will unintentionally struggle to make sound decisions because decision making is anchored on interpreting information and communicating findings with your stakeholders.

What is information: It is merely a collection of signs and symbols that you use for decision making in the execution of your duties and responsibilities be it at home, at school, at work or anywhere else.

Information As a Decision Quality Determinant:

1) Information/Data Interpretation — the way how information is arranged, packaged, and transmitted determines how you interpret it, and the way how you interpret it determines the quality of decisions that you make and the action that you take.

2) Sources of Information/Data — Education, Religion, Parenting, Past Experiences, and Dreams as well as Gossip (Grapevine), Intelligence Service, Propaganda, Culture and Tradition etc. are some of the predominant sources of the information which we have about ourselves and about the world around us.

Sources of information determine what you consider to be good or bad or what you consider to be right or wrong. They also determine what you choose to do and what you choose to ignore.

As such, the main difference between those who make smart (wise) decisions and those who make foolish decisions is Information Processing or Thinking.

Connecting Dots Between Thoughts, Decisions, Actions and Reality — The way you think influences the decisions which you make, and these decisions determine the action you take or the things you do, and consequently, the things which you do determine your reality (lived experiences).

If you make a Shallow/Foolish/Stupid Decision, it means your ability to think is compromised (you lack objectivity and open-mindedness) and consequently, your life experiences will be terrible.

On the contrary, if you make Smart Decisions, it means your ability to think is well developed (you can connect the dots because you ‘think’ broadly, you are open-minded and objective) and consequently, your life experiences will be favorable.

The ability to think can be continuously developed through training using various decision tools such as The Smart Decision Toolkit, The Eisenhower Matrix, SWOT Analysis and The Pareto Principle etc.

Things To Remember About the Effect/Impact Of Decisions:

1) Good decisions are a product of exposure to correct information acted upon by an objective and open mind — when you use wrong information, you will make a wrong (bad) decision.

2) An understanding of the principles of information and communication is an important step towards making better decisions. Every decision is based on the information you have about the subject, yourself and the world around you.

3) You can have good intentions and still make a bad decision. It’s possible to make bad decisions even though your intentions are good. You can mean no harm and yet still cause harm to yourself or to others.

4) When you make un-informed decisions, you will unfortunately suffer the consequences bad decisions rather than to enjoy the benefits of having good intentions.

5) Smart decisions result in positive outcomes while foolish decisions result in negative outcomes.

When making a decision, it is important for you to have a checklist of things that you must consider so that:

1) You will be able to assess and evaluate how these things affect the outcomes of your decisions

2) You will be able to assess how these things are affected by the outcomes of your decisions.

The decision checklist which you create must help you:

1) To see and consider things that may affect the outcomes of your decisions.

2) To see how the outcomes of your decisions may affect other things that are important to you.

In The Smart Decisions Handbook, I encourage people to adopt what I termed The Smart Decision Toolkit or The Fundamental Congruence Checklist.

The Fundamental Congruence Checklist is basically a set of ten questions that helps you to broadly, objectively and open-mindedly process information about any subject in order for you to understand it better.

It seeks to sharpen your decision-making abilities through answering the following ten questions:

1) What is this thing? Who is this person?

2) What does he/she/it do and how? — What are the key result areas or objectives and how are they accomplished?

3) Why does he/she/it do so? — Why are those the key result areas, objective or purpose?

4) What happens if he/she/it does not do anything or does not perform as expected?

5) Where is this thing or person situated in the whole matrix — what position does he/she/it occupy?

6) Why is he/she/it situated there? — Why is he/she/it occupying that space?

7) What happens if he/she/it is completely removed, moved somewhere, misplaced or even altered?

8) Who is in charge of him/her/it and why? — Who makes he/she/it work as planned?

9) How is his/her/its effectiveness assessed? — How do I or other people know if he/she/it is effective or not?

10) What happens if he/she/it is effective or not — What are the related consequences?

By using a Congruence Checklist, you will be able to clearly define the purpose of anything and then determine its relevance and interconnectedness to other things which are dear to you in life before you commit your energy, time, and resources to it.

Main Attributes of The Smart Decision Toolkit — Fundamental Congruence Checklist:

1) Broader perspective — you learn to look at something from different angles in order to get a better and wider comprehension of the subject or circumstances.

2) Open Mindedness — you get equipped/prepared to learn, adopt and utilize new ideas and ways of thinking as they emerge.

3) Objectivity — you get to master the art of expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations — this statement is adapted from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

When you don’t ask yourself ten questions on this checklist, you are likely to make impulsive decisions out of emotions (excitement) and do things that are very costly and regrettable.

For training and assistance on how to effectively use the Smart Decision Toolkit (Fundamental Congruence Checklist), contact me on — brian@briankazungu.com