Here is a process checklist of actions that best mitigate the effects of Red Flags and promote “Smart Choice” decision practices. It's actually 3 checklists in 1. The checklist produces safeguards to avoid the effects of distorted thinking. The checklist helps to identify the complexity of the decisions, risks and tradeoffs, ethical considerations, implementation of the decisions, monitors and controls and offers a process for corrective action. See below for how my checklist makes for a better decisions.
Checklist
1. Identify your real decision problem
2. Specify your objective
3. Create a full range of alternatives
4. Understand the consequences of the alternatives - am I fully aware of the costs associated with this decision
5. Make explicit the inherent value of tradeoffs
6. Clarify the relevant uncertainties
7. Account for your risk tolerance
8. Consider implications for interrelated decisions
9. If I waited a week would I still make the same decision
10. A year from now will this decision still be a good one
11. Have I done my homework – good reason or excitement
12. Will this decision harm people – to athletes - do no harm
13. Will this decision unduly harm the environment – in my case the basketball community
14. Is this decision unethical, immoral or illegal
15. Will this decision set a bad example for my children
16. If no one could see that I was doing this is it, still the right thing to do
17. If everyone could see what I was doing, is it still the right thing to do
18. The act of choice (calculating the optimal decision)
19. Implementing the decision
20. Follow up feedback and control
21. Corrective action
22. Renewal of the search, and
23. Revision of objectives
Checklist items 1 – 8 help to process Category 2 decisions; items 9 – 23 are global. Items 1 – 8 present an insider view and items 9 – 17 provide an important outside view perspective to temper optimism and take a balanced perspective. Items 12 – 17 ensure that we are considering the decision through an ethical lens. Items 18 – 23 involve the actual process of making the decision, implementation, monitoring the results and a contingency approach if we need to change the decision. This checklist offers a relatively balanced approach to the decision making process.
Successful identification of the decision problem creates clarity in order to determine a process to solve the decision problem.
Weighing objectives prioritizes goals. Decision-making is challenging when objectives are equally weighed. Differentiating objectives through weighing paints a clear picture of which goals are most important to the organization and the decision-makers.
A full range of alternatives provides decision makers with an array of plausible options to address the decision problem.
Understanding the consequences of the alternative identifies the risk associated with a decision. Alternatives can be easily overvalued because we focus only on the benefits and ignore the risks. This item is an important safeguard against delusions of success, "Rose Colored Glasses", accentuating the Positive, and the Insider View. This item also safeguards against misleading recognition, inappropriate attachment and inappropriate self-interest through highlight risk associated with an alternative.
Awareness of the value trade-offs helps decision makers understand the opportunity costs associated of the decision.
Clarification of the relevant uncertainties frames the complexity of the decision. Identification of the decision category will help decision-makers chose the necessary process to deal with a category 1 or 2 decision.
The decision-makers risk tolerance must be consistent with the level of risk of the alternative to determine if decision-makers are prepared to accept risks associated with the potential benefits of the alternative.
Interrelated decisions encourage us to consider consolidations or fusion of alternatives, instead of one plan or another to best facilitate the objectives and address the decision problem.
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