Painful, time-consuming and ineffective might be among the words that come to mind when you think about past, or current, decisions. Whether big or little, important or trivial, unilateral or group efforts, decision making can be really hard. Couple this with the fact that we make an enormous number of decisions daily, and it is a wonder we are rarely taught a good decision making process.
Imagine a homing pigeon without a home. It would fly aimlessly and starve to death. But with a home, the pigeon can start from anywhere and choose among many routes to return to the roost. And yet people tend to operate like homeless homing pigeons all the time. We argue about the routes to the roost without first agreeing on its location. In other words, we constantly debate the alternatives without first agreeing on the objectives. The evidence is everywhere. And the consequence is waste – wasted time, wasted money, and wasted opportunity.