How to Make Timely Decisions 

Timely decision-making can mean the difference between being a standout professional or falling behind your colleagues. It can mean the difference between a super-successful and a mediocre career.

Is your decision-making process slower than it should be? The situation needs to be remedied immediately. The tips below can supercharge your decision-making and dramatically transform your practice.

1. Create a unified decision-making system

This step-by-step system is simple enough for every professional to follow and should be mandatory for anybody making decisions,big or small. The steps are:

• Evaluate the decision on a scale of 1 – 5, with 1 being not that important and 5 being critical. This will enable you to identify priorities and tackle important decisions as quickly as possible.
• Create a list of options. Create a list of viable options for implementing the decision. You should then narrow these options to two or three.
• Research. Gather specific information needed for the final two to three options to enable them to be evaluated effectively, information such as costs, time frames, risks, outcomes, etc.
• Evaluate the pros and cons. Information collected can then evaluate each option and decide on the best one. 
• Evaluate outcomes. Always evaluate the outcome of the decision and analyse what went right or wrong and what you could have done better.

2. Fix a definite timeline

Depending on the priority, importance, or urgency of the decision, set a fixed deadline for deciding. This could range from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks. 

Clarify that the time limit is mandatory and that you put all your effort and focus into reaching a decision by the deadline.

The pressure of being under a deadline will motivate you to focus all of your attention on the decision and avoid procrastination and unnecessary delay.

3. Emphasise the value of timeliness

Not everyone understands or cares about the importance of timely decision-making.

Professionals should emphasise the importance of timely decision-making and have examples of how it can affect the outcomes. 

Everyone must learn to appreciate that faster decision-making can help you deliver better results. 

Conclusion

A common problem is that professionals are resistant, hesitant or simply uncaring about timely decision-making.

By introducing these three simple techniques, you change that significantly. Over time, they will become an ingrained part of your practice.

Timely and efficient decision-making is an essential component of success – from the ground up.

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