How to Build Thinking & Decision Making Skills

Decisions can be hard to make.

Thinking and decision-making skills are the cornerstones of competence. Even if your technical skills are excellent, you will suffer immensely without thinking and decision-making skills. Naturally, this raises questions about what it means to "think properly" and "make good decisions." While the nature of thinking and decision making is ultimately both contextual and subjective, you can improve specific subsets of critical thinking skills according to fairly reliable performance standards.

Instructions

1. Write down your goals in every situation where you need to think and make decisions. Before even thinking of a solution, decide what your ideal outcome is, and what other stakeholders' ideal outcomes are. Once you understand what the ideal outcome is, write it down on a piece of paper. For example, if you are developing a business, state something like "my objective is to make $50,000 my first year."

2. Think about all factors and perspectives. If you are thinking about a business dilemma, consider the issue from the viewpoint of everybody involved. For example, if you are working on a construction process, consider the labor, environmental and industrial consequences. If you are thinking about a political or social dilemma, consider people on a more personal level. For example, think about how different stakeholders' feelings would be affected if you excluded them from a social event.

3. Write a list of costs and benefits. Think about major decisions in terms of costs and benefits to you and to others, then write the costs on one piece of paper and the benefits on another. Add up the total costs and benefits, and consider scrapping the plans if the balance is on the cost side.

4. Write a list of all alternate possibilities. When faced with a decision that appears to be between two choices, take out a piece of paper and write all alternative solutions you can think of. For example, if your team is trying to decide whether to go to McDonald's or Burger King for lunch, offer Wendy's, A&W and Subway as alternatives. Only do this if you think the group has narrowed down to a "one or the other" decision prematurely; do not re-open old options after they have been discussed to death.

5. Gather all information. Purchase written materials. Download information off the Internet. Call customer service lines. Once you have done all your brainstorming and have narrowed your decision down to just a handful of possibilities, gather all of the information on each one and compare the features of each decision to the list of goals you made in Step 1. For example, if you have already decided that you only want to buy a $50,000 luxury car that has a V8 engine, download all of the relevant information on cars meeting these criteria off the Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Cadillac and Lexus websites, and decide which one offers the benefits that suit your needs.

References

• Psychology 4 All: How to Improve your Thinking Skills; 2011
• Mind Tools: Decision Making Techniques