THINKING FOR GREAT DECISIONS

If great decisions do not just happen (Neurons #17), then to make a truly great decision, you have to engage in real thinking. What enables you to make a great decision is the quality of thinking that you bring to the decision. This involves being able to think things through, gather required information, weigh the decision against high quality criteria, and the make a committed decision.

The word itself, decision literally refers to a cutting (“cision”) that divides things (“de”). When you make a decision you simultaneously say yes to one thing and no to other things. In deciding, you choose between options, you select what you want to do, and then you consider, evaluate, deliberate, and determine your direction. Robbins (1991) says that a decision is “the giant power that shapes destiny.” That’s because when you make a decision, consequences follow. In that way deciding shapes your future—your destiny.

This reveals that the act of deciding or choosing is one of the highest executive powers of your mind. When you decide or choose you set a direction for your consciousness, you establish a focus and perceiving, you distinguish your values and disvalues, you experience the power to cause things to happen in your world, etc. And that’s just the beginning.

Deciding is not only a function of thinking, it is one kind of thinking. Because of that, you can’t make quality decisions any better than you can think. Low quality thinking means low quality decisions. And because deciding depends on thinking, this explains why we often make poor decisions. Why?

First, because we are not thinking —instead we are reacting or we following tradition and habit or we are letting external circumstances decide for us. So we default on deciding. Second, we think poorly —we act with haste, think shallowly, superficial understanding. We make unwarranted assumptions. We are blind to our premises and biases. Third, we use low quality data for our thinking —we quote questionable sources like “fake news,” we don’t ask about sources or question the source’s credibility. Fourth, when it comes to major life decisions, most people do not have a well-thought out strategy for making a decision.

Because of all this, the phenomenon of deciding or decision-making is not well understood. Most people actually need to develop a disciplined, systematic approach to decision-making. Deciding is about the future— anticipating, forecasting, and appraising what will happen or likely to happen. It is about understanding trends (past and present) and their direction. Deciding is

also about dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty— it is about not “knowing,” but the probability of X or Y happening and being prepared. Deciding is up against our myopia about the future. And all the while we are striving to make decisions in order to make things happen.

One of the first strategies that most people learn in NLP training is the decision strategy. The process involves thinking about a decision that you made that worked out very well and then identifying how you made that decision. What were your concerns? How did you compare it against your values and standards? What processes of evaluation did you go through? How did you weigh the advantage or dis-advantage of the alternatives? Etc.

Additionally, another aspects of the thinking that we engage in when we make a decision concerns the meta-program filters that influence what and how we sort out information. This leads to your unique decision-making style. To the end, there are numerous styles of decision- making, styles that are governed by the particular meta-programs that you use in deciding.

Speed: How quickly or slowly do you make decisions? Do you immediately act or do you reflect? Or do you delay? Definitive: How decisive or indecisive are you? How often do you change your mind? Convincer: What convinces you to make a decision or that you’ve made a good decision? What representation system? How many times do you need to experience a convincer? Authority source: Do you feel the right to decide in yourself or do you need the advice and counsel of others? Direction: Do you make decisions about what not to do or experience or what you want to experience? Alternatives: Do you need lots of options or do you focus on procedure? How many options? Substance: Do you make decisions based on facts, emotions, circumstances? Striving: How do you strive to make things happen? Facts first (investigate and clarify), design plan (schedule, format, prepare, coordinate), jump into action (active, proactive, risk-taking, experimenting), implement solution (action oriented). Self-Other: Cooperatively, collaboratively, independently, rebelliously (mismatch). Responsibility: Are you under-, over-, or in the middle in terms of response-able? Goal Striving: How do you go after a goal? Cynic perfectionism or Optimizing.

If deciding is such a powerful experience, then to make great decisions, as an individual or as part of a group, requires that we upgrade our thinking and develop a high quality decision- making strategy. This is one thing that regularly happens in Meta-Coaching as clients get to talk through a decision and received insightful questions. This is one of the things you learn in the trainings. Here’s to making great decisions for your future!