decision making process assignment pdf

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5.6: Assignment- Your Decision-Making Process

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Preparation

The Decision Making module of your text provided numerous decision tools and methods to use during the decision process. In this assignment, you will draw upon your personal decision-making experience. As you learned in the module, people make decisions with our biases and preferred styles in play. You will describe your decision, what choices were involved, how you made your decision, and what the outcome was, relating your process to the rational decision-making process described in the text. The following steps will help you prepare for your written assignment:

• Carefully consider the tools and methods described in the reading to assist with Management Decision Making.
• Think of a decision you have made or been involved in making. This could be a personal decision or a work-related decision.

Outline your decision process as it relates to the six steps of the rational decision-making process described in the text:

• Step 1. Identify the Problem
• Step 2. Establish Decision Criteria
• Step 3. Weigh Decision Criteria
• Step 4. Generate Alternatives
• Step 5. Evaluate Alternatives
• Step 6. Select the Best Alternative

For example, if you’re writing about your decision to adopt a pet, the problem you identify in Step 1 might be that you were lonely in your apartment at night, and you’d always wanted to rescue a dog. In Step 2, you could describe the decision criteria you used to select a dog: your apartment only allows dogs under 25 pounds, you wanted a dog with short hair for easier cleanup, you would only travel to a rescue facility within 50 miles of your house, and so on. If you skipped any of the steps above, note that. Include this outline in your written assignment submission.

Write a two-paragraph essay describing your decision process (as outlined above), including its strengths and weaknesses. Your essay must include at least two properly described and referenced decision methods or styles from the text. For example, if your decision was impeded by bias, describe if it was confirmation bias, anchoring, or some other kind of bias. Answer and address these questions:

• What is your preferred decision-making style?
• How does your style work for you? Are you always satisfied with your decisions?
• What method from the text would you consider for your future decision making?
• How important is decision making in the role of a business leader? Provide an example.

In addition to the text, you are encouraged to research decision-making methods using reliable and properly cited Internet resources. You may also draw from your personal experience with appropriate examples to support your references.

Contributors and Attributions

• Assignment: Your Decision-Making Process. Authored by : Betty Fitte and Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

Work Life is Atlassian’s flagship publication dedicated to unleashing the potential of every team through real-life advice, inspiring stories, and thoughtful perspectives from leaders around the world.

Contributing Writer

Work Futurist

Senior Quantitative Researcher, People Insights

Principal Writer

This is how effective teams navigate the decision-making process

Zero Magic 8 Balls required.

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Flipping a coin. Throwing a dart at a board. Pulling a slip of paper out of a hat.

Sure, they’re all ways to make a choice. But they all hinge on random chance rather than analysis, reflection, and strategy — you know, the things you actually need to make the big, meaty decisions that have major impacts.

So, set down that Magic 8 Ball and back away slowly. Let’s walk through the standard framework for decision-making that will help you and your team pinpoint the problem, consider your options, and make your most informed selection. Here’s a closer look at each of the seven steps of the decision-making process, and how to approach each one. 

Step 1: Identify the decision

Most of us are eager to tie on our superhero capes and jump into problem-solving mode — especially if our team is depending on a solution. But you can’t solve a problem until you have a full grasp on what it actually is .

This first step focuses on getting the lay of the land when it comes to your decision. What specific problem are you trying to solve? What goal are you trying to achieve? 

How to do it: 

• Use the 5 whys analysis to go beyond surface-level symptoms and understand the root cause of a problem.
• Try problem framing to dig deep on the ins and outs of whatever problem your team is fixing. The point is to define the problem, not solve it. 

⚠️ Watch out for: Decision fatigue , which is the tendency to make worse decisions as a result of needing to make too many of them. Making choices is mentally taxing , which is why it’s helpful to pinpoint one decision at a time. 

2. Gather information

Your team probably has a few hunches and best guesses, but those can lead to knee-jerk reactions. Take care to invest adequate time and research into your decision.

This step is when you build your case, so to speak. Collect relevant information — that could be data, customer stories, information about past projects, feedback, or whatever else seems pertinent. You’ll use that to make decisions that are informed, rather than impulsive.

• Host a team mindmapping session to freely explore ideas and make connections between them. It can help you identify what information will best support the process.
• Create a project poster to define your goals and also determine what information you already know and what you still need to find out. 

⚠️ Watch out for: Information bias , or the tendency to seek out information even if it won’t impact your action. We have the tendency to think more information is always better, but pulling together a bunch of facts and insights that aren’t applicable may cloud your judgment rather than offer clarity. 

3. Identify alternatives

Use divergent thinking to generate fresh ideas in your next brainstorm

Blame the popularity of the coin toss, but making a decision often feels like choosing between only two options. Do you want heads or tails? Door number one or door number two? In reality, your options aren’t usually so cut and dried. Take advantage of this opportunity to get creative and brainstorm all sorts of routes or solutions. There’s no need to box yourselves in. 

• Use the Six Thinking Hats technique to explore the problem or goal from all sides: information, emotions and instinct, risks, benefits, and creativity. It can help you and your team break away from your typical roles or mindsets and think more freely.
• Try brainwriting so team members can write down their ideas independently before sharing with the group. Research shows that this quiet, lone thinking time can boost psychological safety and generate more creative suggestions .

⚠️ Watch out for: Groupthink , which is the tendency of a group to make non-optimal decisions in the interest of conformity. People don’t want to rock the boat, so they don’t speak up. 

4. Consider the evidence

Armed with your list of alternatives, it’s time to take a closer look and determine which ones could be worth pursuing. You and your team should ask questions like “How will this solution address the problem or achieve the goal?” and “What are the pros and cons of this option?” 

Be honest with your answers (and back them up with the information you already collected when you can). Remind the team that this isn’t about advocating for their own suggestions to “win” — it’s about whittling your options down to the best decision. 

How to do it:

• Use a SWOT analysis to dig into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the options you’re seriously considering.
• Run a project trade-off analysis to understand what constraints (such as time, scope, or cost) the team is most willing to compromise on if needed. 

⚠️ Watch out for: Extinction by instinct , which is the urge to make a decision just to get it over with. You didn’t come this far to settle for a “good enough” option! 

5. Choose among the alternatives

This is it — it’s the big moment when you and the team actually make the decision. You’ve identified all possible options, considered the supporting evidence, and are ready to choose how you’ll move forward.

However, bear in mind that there’s still a surprising amount of room for flexibility here. Maybe you’ll modify an alternative or combine a few suggested solutions together to land on the best fit for your problem and your team. 

• Use the DACI framework (that stands for “driver, approver, contributor, informed”) to understand who ultimately has the final say in decisions. The decision-making process can be collaborative, but eventually someone needs to be empowered to make the final call.
• Try a simple voting method for decisions that are more democratized. You’ll simply tally your team’s votes and go with the majority. 

⚠️ Watch out for: Analysis paralysis , which is when you overthink something to such a great degree that you feel overwhelmed and freeze when it’s time to actually make a choice. 

6. Take action

Making a big decision takes a hefty amount of work, but it’s only the first part of the process — now you need to actually implement it. 

It’s tempting to think that decisions will work themselves out once they’re made. But particularly in a team setting, it’s crucial to invest just as much thought and planning into communicating the decision and successfully rolling it out. 

• Create a stakeholder communications plan to determine how you’ll keep various people — direct team members, company leaders, customers, or whoever else has an active interest in your decision — in the loop on your progress.
• Define the goals, signals, and measures of your decision so you’ll have an easier time aligning the team around the next steps and determining whether or not they’re successful. 

⚠️Watch out for: Self-doubt, or the tendency to question whether or not you’re making the right move. While we’re hardwired for doubt , now isn’t the time to be a skeptic about your decision. You and the team have done the work, so trust the process. 

7. Review your decision

9 retrospective techniques that won’t bore your team to tears.

As the decision itself starts to shake out, it’s time to take a look in the rearview mirror and reflect on how things went.

Did your decision work out the way you and the team hoped? What happened? Examine both the good and the bad. What should you keep in mind if and when you need to make this sort of decision again? 

• Do a 4 L’s retrospective to talk through what you and the team loved, loathed, learned, and longed for as a result of that decision.
• Celebrate any wins (yes, even the small ones ) related to that decision. It gives morale a good kick in the pants and can also help make future decisions feel a little less intimidating.

⚠️ Watch out for: Hindsight bias , or the tendency to look back on events with the knowledge you have now and beat yourself up for not knowing better at the time. Even with careful thought and planning, some decisions don’t work out — but you can only operate with the information you have at the time. 

Making smart decisions about the decision-making process

You’re probably picking up on the fact that the decision-making process is fairly comprehensive. And the truth is that the model is likely overkill for the small and inconsequential decisions you or your team members need to make.

Deciding whether you should order tacos or sandwiches for your team offsite doesn’t warrant this much discussion and elbow grease. But figuring out which major project to prioritize next? That requires some careful and collaborative thought. 

It all comes back to the concept of satisficing versus maximizing , which are two different perspectives on decision making. Here’s the gist:

• Maximizers aim to get the very best out of every single decision.
• Satisficers are willing to settle for “good enough” rather than obsessing over achieving the best outcome.

One of those isn’t necessarily better than the other — and, in fact, they both have their time and place.

A major decision with far-reaching impacts deserves some fixation and perfectionism. However, hemming and hawing over trivial choices ( “Should we start our team meeting with casual small talk or a structured icebreaker?” ) will only cause added stress, frustration, and slowdowns. 

As with anything else, it’s worth thinking about the potential impacts to determine just how much deliberation and precision a decision actually requires. 

Decision-making is one of those things that’s part art and part science. You’ll likely have some gut feelings and instincts that are worth taking into account. But those should also be complemented with plenty of evidence, evaluation, and collaboration.

The decision-making process is a framework that helps you strike that balance. Follow the seven steps and you and your team can feel confident in the decisions you make — while leaving the darts and coins where they belong.

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Module 5: Decision Making

Assignment: your decision-making process.

Step 1:  To view this assignment, click on  Assignment: Your Decision-Making Process.

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• Assignment: Your Decision-Making Process. Authored by : Betty Fitte and Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

7 steps of the decision-making process

Reading time: about 4 min

• Identify the decision.
• Gather relevant info.
• Identify the alternatives.
• Weigh the evidence.
• Choose among the alternatives.
• Take action.
• Review your decision.

Robert Frost wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” But unfortunately, not every decision is as simple as “Let’s just take this path and see where it goes,” especially when you’re making a decision related to your business.

Whether you manage a small team or are at the head of a large corporation, your success and the success of your company depend on you making the right decisions—and learning from the wrong decisions.

Use these decision-making process steps to help you make more profitable decisions. You'll be able to better prevent hasty decision-making and make more educated decisions.

Defining the business decision-making process

The business decision-making process is a step-by-step process allowing professionals to solve problems by weighing evidence, examining alternatives, and choosing a path from there. This defined process also provides an opportunity, at the end, to review whether the decision was the right one.

7 decision-making process steps

Though there are many slight variations of the decision-making framework floating around on the Internet, in business textbooks, and in leadership presentations, professionals most commonly use these seven steps.

1. Identify the decision

To make a decision, you must first identify the problem you need to solve or the question you need to answer. Clearly define your decision. If you misidentify the problem to solve, or if the problem you’ve chosen is too broad, you’ll knock the decision train off the track before it even leaves the station.

If you need to achieve a specific goal from your decision, make it measurable and timely.

2. Gather relevant information

Once you have identified your decision, it’s time to gather the information relevant to that choice. Do an internal assessment, seeing where your organization has succeeded and failed in areas related to your decision. Also, seek information from external sources, including studies, market research, and, in some cases, evaluation from paid consultants.

Keep in mind, you can become bogged down by too much information and that might only complicate the process.

3. Identify the alternatives

With relevant information now at your fingertips, identify possible solutions to your problem. There is usually more than one option to consider when trying to meet a goal. For example, if your company is trying to gain more engagement on social media, your alternatives could include paid social advertisements, a change in your organic social media strategy, or a combination of the two.

4. Weigh the evidence

Once you have identified multiple alternatives, weigh the evidence for or against said alternatives. See what companies have done in the past to succeed in these areas, and take a good look at your organization’s own wins and losses. Identify potential pitfalls for each of your alternatives, and weigh those against the possible rewards.

5. Choose among alternatives

Here is the part of the decision-making process where you actually make the decision. Hopefully, you’ve identified and clarified what decision needs to be made, gathered all relevant information, and developed and considered the potential paths to take. You should be prepared to choose.

6. Take action

7. review your decision.

After a predetermined amount of time—which you defined in step one of the decision-making process—take an honest look back at your decision. Did you solve the problem? Did you answer the question? Did you meet your goals?

If so, take note of what worked for future reference. If not, learn from your mistakes as you begin the decision-making process again.

Tools for better decision-making

Depending on the decision, you might want to weigh evidence using a decision tree . The example below shows a company trying to determine whether to perform market testing before a product launch. The different branches record the probability of success and estimated payout so the company can see which option will bring in more revenue.

Visual Activities are a perfect choice for quickly synthesizing ideas and gaining consensus. Use these dynamic activities with your team members to turn qualitative feedback into actionable insights and easily make decisions in seconds.

A decision matrix is another tool that can help you evaluate your options and make better decisions. Learn how to make a decision matrix and get started quickly with the template below. 

You can also create a classic pros-and-cons list, and clearly highlight whether your options meet necessary criteria or whether they pose too high of a risk.

With these 7 steps we've outlined, plus some tools to get you started, you will be able to make more informed decisions faster . 

Explore additional strategies to help with your decision-making process.

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

Related articles

Use this guide to learn how to make a decision tree in Microsoft Excel—either directly in Excel using Shapes or using a simple Lucidchart integration.

Review these steps of the consumer decision-making process and put yourself in the customer’s shoes to make an impact with your sales or marketing.

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ASSIGNMENT Decision Making Process

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FTC Announces Rule Banning Noncompetes

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Today, the Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule to promote competition by banning noncompetes nationwide, protecting the fundamental freedom of workers to change jobs, increasing innovation, and fostering new business formation.

“Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market.”

The FTC estimates that the final rule banning noncompetes will lead to new business formation growing by 2.7% per year, resulting in more than 8,500 additional new businesses created each year. The final rule is expected to result in higher earnings for workers, with estimated earnings increasing for the average worker by an additional $524 per year, and it is expected to lower health care costs by up to $194 billion over the next decade. In addition, the final rule is expected to help drive innovation, leading to an estimated average increase of 17,000 to 29,000 more patents each year for the next 10 years under the final rule.

Noncompetes are a widespread and often exploitative practice imposing contractual conditions that prevent workers from taking a new job or starting a new business. Noncompetes often force workers to either stay in a job they want to leave or bear other significant harms and costs, such as being forced to switch to a lower-paying field, being forced to relocate, being forced to leave the workforce altogether, or being forced to defend against expensive litigation. An estimated 30 million workers—nearly one in five Americans—are subject to a noncompete.

Under the FTC’s new rule, existing noncompetes for the vast majority of workers will no longer be enforceable after the rule’s effective date. Existing noncompetes for senior executives - who represent less than 0.75% of workers - can remain in force under the FTC’s final rule, but employers are banned from entering into or attempting to enforce any new noncompetes, even if they involve senior executives. Employers will be required to provide notice to workers other than senior executives who are bound by an existing noncompete that they will not be enforcing any noncompetes against them.

In January 2023, the FTC issued a  proposed rule which was subject to a 90-day public comment period. The FTC received more than 26,000 comments on the proposed rule, with over 25,000 comments in support of the FTC’s proposed ban on noncompetes. The comments informed the FTC’s final rulemaking process, with the FTC carefully reviewing each comment and making changes to the proposed rule in response to the public’s feedback.

In the final rule, the Commission has determined that it is an unfair method of competition, and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, for employers to enter into noncompetes with workers and to enforce certain noncompetes.

The Commission found that noncompetes tend to negatively affect competitive conditions in labor markets by inhibiting efficient matching between workers and employers. The Commission also found that noncompetes tend to negatively affect competitive conditions in product and service markets, inhibiting new business formation and innovation. There is also evidence that noncompetes lead to increased market concentration and higher prices for consumers.

Alternatives to Noncompetes

The Commission found that employers have several alternatives to noncompetes that still enable firms to protect their investments without having to enforce a noncompete.

Trade secret laws and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) both provide employers with well-established means to protect proprietary and other sensitive information. Researchers estimate that over 95% of workers with a noncompete already have an NDA.

The Commission also finds that instead of using noncompetes to lock in workers, employers that wish to retain employees can compete on the merits for the worker’s labor services by improving wages and working conditions.

Changes from the NPRM

Under the final rule, existing noncompetes for senior executives can remain in force. Employers, however, are prohibited from entering into or enforcing new noncompetes with senior executives. The final rule defines senior executives as workers earning more than $151,164 annually and who are in policy-making positions.

Additionally, the Commission has eliminated a provision in the proposed rule that would have required employers to legally modify existing noncompetes by formally rescinding them. That change will help to streamline compliance.

Instead, under the final rule, employers will simply have to provide notice to workers bound to an existing noncompete that the noncompete agreement will not be enforced against them in the future. To aid employers’ compliance with this requirement, the Commission has included model language in the final rule that employers can use to communicate to workers. 

The Commission vote to approve the issuance of the final rule was 3-2 with Commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Andrew N. Ferguson voting no. Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter , Alvaro Bedoya , Melissa Holyoak and Andrew N. Ferguson each issued separate statements. Chair Lina M. Khan will issue a separate statement.

The final rule will become effective 120 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Once the rule is effective, market participants can report information about a suspected violation of the rule to the Bureau of Competition by emailing  [email protected] . 

The Federal Trade Commission develops policy initiatives on issues that affect competition, consumers, and the U.S. economy. The FTC will never demand money, make threats, tell you to transfer money, or promise you a prize. Follow the  FTC on social media , read  consumer alerts  and the  business blog , and  sign up to get the latest FTC news and alerts .

Press Release Reference

Contact information, media contact.

Victoria Graham Office of Public Affairs 415-848-5121