You can view or download a free copy of my Decision Matrix ebook.
Thanks to everyone for the tremendous support for my decision matrix blog post last week. The response was so great that I decided to repackage the information as an ebook.
Make The Perfect Decision Every Time ebook contains the same great description of the decision matrix and its process. To help you use it even more effectively, I’ve included a two page form that you can print and use to work through your own decisions. I’ve given a Creative Commons license for the forms that allow you to share them, copy them, and use them for your personal and business decisions as long as you don’t modify the forms.
To help you understand the decision matrix process even more, I’ve filled out the forms to simulate the family vacation example I used to explain the process. You can see how to fill out the forms as you walk through this process. That will also help you get going with this great tool even faster.
If you like the decision matrix ebook with its forms, please share it with your friends, your family, your co-workers–anyone who makes decisions.
View or download your copy of Make The Perfect Decision Every Time free ebook.
Comments 2
This is without doubt the best article I have seen on making good decisions! I used this system in the late 80s to help avoid premature decisions and untangle individual agendas.
The project:
In the late 80’s, I was a young, ambitious woman in charge of management training for 10,000 managers worldwide. I was given a project to develop an ethics program.
The context:
The corporate mindset was that an established large consulting organization with a track record of creating similar programs for other large companies in our industry was the best fit. (Can you say cookie cutter?)
All my bosses and their bosses were male and older than me. I had been hired for my creative approaches to problems, so perhaps naively, I wanted to apply that thinking here to produce something that would really work.
My perspectives:
I protested the “end result” of another nice poster for the manager’s offices and a training program and manual to justify it. I felt that this would generate more cynicism on the part of employees who were ethical and ignored by those who were not. I was summoned to the Vice-Chairman’s office and lectured that “The optics must be good.” (Amazed I was not fired for my continued protests.)
I believed that the process was more important than the size of the service provider or the gender of the consultants. If managers were to get behind this project, they would have to have significant input into the ethical guidelines they would enforce. Bottom-up would help them understand how to support their employees more ethically. If they wanted a PR effort, I told them I was the wrong person to lead the project. (Again, a miracle I was not fired.)
My process:
I met individually with each of the decision makers to identify the issues that were most important to them. I asked each contender the same questions based on these issues and summarized their answers in what I called a “Weighted Ranking System”.
The result:
My choice came out clearly ahead of the other 4 choices.
The first step was for her to meet with each of them to build a relationship with them so that they would implement the program once we had designed it.
The Human Resources Manager accountable for the results, who was in his late 50s and overweight commented that my first choice, a woman in her late 50s and overweight, “Looked like his grandmother”. (Remember, this was the era when women were still hitting their heads on the glass ceiling.)
As soon as budget cuts were requested, guess what went first….
The process worked; the decision-makers who participated cut the funding.
@ArtMktgMentor
Posted 28 Feb 2009 at 1:03 pm ¶Thanks for sharing your story, Aleta. The world is a funny place, and the workplace is even funnier. Tools like the decision matrix make it easier to sort out complex situations and give some peace of mind in the process. Thanks for your kind comments about the ebook.
Posted 28 Feb 2009 at 1:17 pm ¶Post a Comment