Have you ever found yourself frozen by too many choices? When they all seem to have their merits, it’s easy to become bogged down and even paralyzed with indecision.
So, how do you keep from getting stuck in analysis paralysis when you have to make a big decision that turns on choosing one option out of many?
I suggest a five-step process:
Step One: Make a list of the criteria that are most important in making a decision.
Step Two: Create a table or spreadsheet with your criteria down the side and your options across the top.
Step Three: Rank each option against each of the criteria and add up the results for each option. (A five-point scale works well. If you want to weight some criteria as more important than others, do that.)
Step Four: Reflect on the results and tweak your criteria if you want.
Step Five: Make a decision.
Here’s what decision grids looked like in a couple of real-life examples.
First up is the grid of a friend I was coaching about choosing between three attractive career options. Her grid looked something like this:
My friend found this process very clarifying and reports that she is thrilled with her new job. (She’s the one who encouraged me to write this post. I see you, Vicki!)
And here’s the decision-making grid that my wife, Diane, and I came up with when we were considering where to move when we were ready to leave California at the end of 2020.
As you may know, we moved to Durham, North Carolina in 2021 and generally love it here. We miss our sons and their partners in California but that’s why the good airport with direct flights ranked high on our criteria list!
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that this decision-making grid approach is a very simple tool. Most good tools are in my experience. What my clients, friends, and Diane and I have found in using it is that a lot of the value comes through identifying the criteria that are most important to you in making the decision. Putting them down on paper or screen and ranking your options against them keeps you from spinning endlessly.
What big choices are you sorting through right now? What criteria are most important for you to consider in making a decision? Leave a comment on LinkedIn or send me a note about your situation and what has you stuck or gotten you unstuck.
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The post Making Smart Choices: How to Use a Decision Grid to Avoid Analysis Paralysis first appeared on The Eblin Group.
