Systematic Decision Making

Systematic Decision Making Systematic decision making, is a way to try to systematically make collaborative and individual decisions.

What is the story here?

We come forward with the subject of the discusion, and let everybody tell their story on the subject.

Who are the stakeholders

When we make decision that affects others, we should try to figure out who are the stakeholders. With whom should we take the decisions? The actual involvement of the decision makers will be according to the stages of the question, the availability and the type of decision maker.

This question should be asked through the whole process, and new stakeholders should come into the process, when thy are found to be stakeholders.

What are our needs?

Any decision is aimed at selecting the appropriate actions to yield high ROI and valuable outcomes. The outcomes of the actions should best serve the needs of the decision makers. This is called the need-decision-action-reward cycle. So, in the first step of systematic decision making, we should try to understand what are the needs we try to fulfill are.

This can be done quite well by the Motivational Interview method. By investigating to the reasons and basic motivation to do things.

What is the Vision?

According to the NDAR cycle, a result of our action will yield a situation that will fulfill our needs. So we should try to establish a vision of the situation in which our needs will be fulfilled. For example, if we will be rich, we can buy everything we need. So we will vision ourselves as rich people.

Of course, visioning to high or to a place which is beyond our abilities will create an unrealistic vision, which will take us a lot of resources and may not mature. The Vision should be realistic, if we want to be able to build concrete solution to fulfill our needs.

First exploration of the field

To achieve the vision we should get familiar with the field. We should ask ourselves general questions like, what do we know about this field of knowledge? What are the obstacles to achieve the vision.

What are our plans to achieve the vision?

We should try to set goals and milestones to create the vision. We should set options, and select them, by our ability to deliver them, by it's ROI and by their correspondence to our values. If the values are not homogeneous in the group, they should be discussed and explored to achieve better understanding and coordination.

Options

To achieve creativity we should start with free brainstorming, synthesis and the selecting. We should try to design from high level to low level. In each level we should use several options and select from them by using parmeters of theories (corroboration), values and ROI.

Synthesis

To try to make the process more knowledgeable and more effective, one might try to synthesize between different options. She might also try to find new solutions, when other options are been criticized.

Selection

According to the goals, the ROI, the corroboration of the theories, the exprience and the values, the group should select minmum set of options to put to the test.

Devlope and Test

To see if the solution works, develop it and test it. If it works, put it to decision makers to allocate resources, if it doesn't work, go back to development or choose another option.

Problems

If we are unable to achieve the goals or the vision we set to ourselves. Then we should ask ourselves what is the problem?

What is the story?

Ask people what is the problem, what they think is going wrong, what hearts them.

Define the problems

Try to define what are the problems that causes the inability to achieve the goals. Use criticism to select the most corroborated defenitions.

Select the most important Problems

From thus, select the ones that when solved will give the best advantage to the group.

Find solutions with OSSTD

Develop solutions with the Option, Synthesis, Selection, Test & Develop procesdure.