As an entrepreneur, you must make decisions every day, both small and large. You have to make personnel, financial, product, customer service, marketing, sales, and other choices throughout the year, often with little experience in some of these fields.
The decisions you make can lead to the success or failure of your business, so it’s vital to help yourself make choices that have more positive impacts than negative ones. There’s never any guarantee of outcomes, but if you follow a few decision-making tips, you should be able to increase the likelihood that you get favorable results.
Know What You’re Trying to Achieve
To make effective decisions, you need to be very clear about the various short-term and long-term goals you want to achieve. The only way to tell if you’ve made a good decision, after all, is if it helps you attain or get closer to preferred outcomes.
Ensure you know where you’re trying to take your company, so it’s easier to see the right direction when making decisions. Talk to and think about the various stakeholders in your company, and try to sort out any misalignment of goals if needed. The clearer you and others are on the business goals, the easier it is to assess ideas and possible solutions and choices with a targeted eye.
Identify the Common Decisions You Must Make
It’s also vital to identify the common decision you have to make in your firm so you can plan for them better. Know which factors are essential and time-sensitive to see where and how to prioritize. It pays to put together a list of the top ten or 20 decisions you’ll need to make in the short term, then rank them in order of significance and deadlines.
From there, it’s easier to understand where to focus your energy. Invest the most in the decisions that will have the greatest impact on business results now and in the future. You don’t want to rush these choices, as this makes you more likely to make errors in judgment.
Gather, Track, and Manage Data
To make the best decisions possible, you need reliable data available to you. It’s better to gather information to choose a course of action so you can make decisions based on evidence, statistics, probabilities, etc., rather than only emotion or gut instinct.
Using facts to decide vital things will reduce the chances of being swayed by personal biases and experiences and ignoring objective realities. The knowledge and skills you’ve used in the past can be helpful, but they may not apply to the situation at hand. However, complete performance and other data related to the topic you’re deciding on should be more impartial and up to date.
Tech tools can help you gather, track, and manage real-time information. For example, use helpful electronic data capture services to collate details in a hurry and software programs to run reports and aid you in analysis. Website statistics, financial information, inventory management rundowns, and other data will help you get a clear picture in your mind of the current situation.
Examine Problems from a Whole-Context Point of View
Another way to make better decisions is to look at the problems you face from a whole-context point of view rather than a narrow focus. To get clarity, take a step back and try to see things in a broader light for the bigger picture. You can reframe your decisions and make them more attuned to reality by examining as many perspectives and likely outcomes (short-term and long-term ones) as possible.
When we have a choice to make, we tend to focus on one factor over others, depending on our personal preferences, beliefs, values, and experiences. However, there are always more aspects to weigh up, many of which may be just as crucial. Before you decide, stop and think if there are other people’s viewpoints you need to see things from or a different timeframe to consider.
Seek External Advice as Needed
You may be the one to make many final decisions, but don’t hesitate to get external advice and opinions as needed. Being open-minded and seeking out other ideas can help bring points to your attention that you’d otherwise miss. Speak with employees, partners, investors, mentors, third-party advisors, etc., to obtain a wide range of views. Seek out input from people with subject-matter expertise or in-depth experience in the field you’re deciding about.
Decisions come hard and fast in business, and you have to find ways to make them quickly yet strategically. Using the above tips will help. Plus, remember that there aren’t typically any perfect choices available to you, so do what you can to mitigate risks and other downsides. Then, take time to analyze decision outcomes so you can continue to learn and make better decisions next time.
