Bite-Sized Training

How to Avoid Decision-

Making Paralysis
 How to Avoid Decision-Making Paralysis Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools

How to Avoid Decision-

Making Paralysis Bite-
Sized Training
This e-book is published by:

Mind Tools Ltd.

Copyright Mind Tools Ltd, 2006-2012. All rights

reserved.

Version 1.3

This e-book is protected by international copyright

law. You may use it only if you are authorized by
your organization to use Mind Tools Connect. If
you have any queries, please contact us at
connect.helpdesk@mindtools.com.

Cover image iStockphoto/ermingut

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Contents

1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4

2. The Decision-Making Dilemma ...................................................................................................... 5

3. Key Points.................................................................................................................................... 12

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1. Introduction
Decision making is a skill that transcends every
industry and every organization, at every level
and every job. To be good at your job, whatever it
is, you need to be able to make decisions. More
importantly you need to make decisions when you
are under time pressure, and when you dont
have every piece of information about the
alternatives.
If you start looking for the perfect decision, or one
that satisfies everyone involved, then youre
doomed; you will have entered decision-making
paralysis territory, and its hard to find your way
out once you get stuck. By learning how to make
good decisions in spite of imperfect
circumstances, you reduce the overall stress of
decision making, and improve your overall
effectiveness.
Once you allow yourself to make decisions that
might not be perfect, you will be amazed at how
much better the decisions you do make become.
Mind Tools Ltd, 2006-2012
This Bite-Sized Training session focuses on the
essentials of avoiding decision-making paralysis.
In a short lesson that you can do in just one lunch
hour, youll:
Understand why no decision is ever
perfect.
Learn how to use Paired Comparison
Analysis and Grid Analysis.
Gain confidence in your ability to make
decisions despite there being uncertainty.
By the end of the lesson, youll have learned the
tools you need to start making decisions
confidently, efficiently, and effectively all
important for reducing stress, becoming more
productive, and improving your value to your
organization.
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 How to Avoid Decision-Making Paralysis Bite-Sized TrainingTM | Mind Tools
2. The Decision-Making Dilemma
Decision making is the crux of most jobs. You
cant avoid it theres always something to
decide.
Is it best to ramp up production immediately and
risk equipment failure, or do I wait the six months
for the new machinery to be operational? What
other ways of meeting sales demand can I use?
Do I hold the meeting in the conference room or
in Garys office? Which of the hotels in town shall
I use for the next sales conference?
The impact of the decision may be small (does it
really matter where the meeting is held?) or it
may be large (production choices will have a
significant effect on costs).
You may need to spend more time coming up
with alternative options (such as outsourcing
production or buying in part-finished materials),
but youll find that you can quickly choose
between them once youve come up with them.
Or, it may be easy to draw up the list of
alternatives (hotels offering conference facilities
are all listed on the Web), but then to spend
longer deciding which is best.
Regardless, the decision has to be made, and it
needs to be made efficiently and with an
appropriate degree of analysis.
Heres where the trouble with decision making
comes in. How much analysis is enough? Should
you keep looking at the decision from every angle
until you find the perfect solution? Or do you
make an educated guess, even when you dont
How much time did you spend in total on finding alternatives and choosing between them?
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know everything about the alternatives, or the
effect they will have?
The amount of time you spend on a decision
depends on its impact (the cost and
consequences of choosing a particular
alternative, or of getting it wrong). How you spend
that time depends on the nature of the decision.
Always start by roughly defining how long in total
you feel you should be spending on researching
alternatives and choosing between them before
you begin.
On one hand, you must avoid the temptation to
carry on looking for more and more options,
which might be slightly better than those you have
already, but not sufficiently better to justify your
time if the decision is low impact. On the other
hand, you must avoid going for the first solution
without spending enough time considering
whether there are better alternatives. Its a
question of having the right balance.
So, the decision-making dilemma comes down to
these two options:
Keep analyzing until you find a perfect
solution.
Just make a decision now.
Action: Think about three decisions you have
made recently at work that had different impacts.
Then answer the questions in the table below.
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Was the amount of time you spent related to the impact of the decision?

What was the balance between the time spent researching alternatives and actually making the
decision?

Do you think you got that balance right, or did you spend too much or too little time searching
for perfect solutions? Or too much or too little time deciding between the potential solutions?

Effective decision makers recognize that there
may be no perfect solution, and they actually
make decisions, rather than dither on them. They
realize that:
Decisions need to be made in the face
of time limits or limited information.
You cant predict the future.
No one can ever really identify all the
factors that influence a decision.
You cant please all of the people all of
the time, and a good decision may be
unpopular with some.
These realizations liberate them from the
decision-making paralysis that plagues so many
others. And the acceptance of these decision-
making realities is what allows them to be
confident with their decision making.
The key to overcoming this paralysis and
becoming a confident and effective decision
maker is learning how to choose the least bad
option from a set of imperfect solutions. There are
two very practical decision-making tools designed
to help you do just that. They are:
Paired Comparison Analysis used
to work out the relative importance of
different factors or options, when this
isnt clear.
Grid Analysis used for making a
decision when you need to take many
different factors into account.
Harrys Decision
Using these two tools, we are going to help Harry,
the training coordinator at Rainmaker Industries,
decide what training to offer employees in an
upcoming training event.
Harrys company would like to offer employees
nine training sessions. However, sales of the rain
accessories that the company produces are
down, and there is budget only for three training
sessions.
Harry has grouped the training sessions into three
areas: communication skills, personal
effectiveness, and leadership development. He
must now choose one session, out of the three in
each area. The session options in each area are:

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(You can read more about Paired Comparison

Area Session Options Analysis here.)

Then, when he knows how the criteria rank, he

Communication Communicating Effectively can then analyze each option based on that
Skills ranking using Grid Analysis. (You can read more
Making an Impact with Clients about Grid Analysis here.)

Powerful Presentations Paired Comparison Analysis

The objective of Paired Comparison Analysis is to

Personal Stress Management compare a number of different options, and
Effectiveness decide which has a higher importance. From
Dealing with Anger in the there you can determine the option with the
Workplace highest importance rating.

Delegating with Confidence In our example, Harry must decide the relative
importance of the four factors that he has
identified.
Leadership Performance Appraisals Done
Skills Right Note:
In theory, Harry could have used Paired
The Power of Recognition Comparison Analysis alone to compare the
training session options.
Managing Change
However, using Paired Comparison Analysis and
Grid Analysis together allows Harry to have more
confidence in his final decision.
To make this decision, Harry has identified four
factors that he thinks will be useful for
determining which courses to choose: Step 1:

1. Immediate relevance of the training. First, you place your options in a grid, by writing
(Relevance.) each as a row and a column header.
2. Application in daily management
responsibilities. (Application.) Action: Fill in the row and column headers in the
3. Impact on employee morale. (Morale.) table on the next page. Remember, Harrys
4. Long-term benefit and importance. (Long- options, based on the factors he identified above,
term.) are:

The problem with these four factors is that its Relevance.

difficult for Harry to decide which of these is most Application.
important, as he has no real objective data to go Morale.
by. Long-term.

So, the first thing Harry must do is determine the (Weve already filled in criteria 1 and 2:
relative importance of each of these criteria. He Relevance and Application.)
can do this with Paired Comparison Analysis.

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Relevance Application
Relevance
Application

Step 2:

Then, you mark out the cells where you will comparison. This ensures that you make each
compare an option with itself, and you mark out comparison only once.
the cells where you would be duplicating a
Your grid will then look like this:

Relevance Application Morale Long-term

Relevance
Application
Morale
Long-term

Step 3:
Next, within each of the blank cells, you compare 0 = no difference.
the option in the row with the option in the 1 = slight difference.
column, and decide which of the two options is 2= moderate difference.
most important. 3 = major difference.

Then you record the more important option in Action: Do a Paired Comparison Analysis for
each cell. For example, for the first clear cell, is it Harrys decision in the table below. Weve filled in
more important for the course to be immediately the first two cells to get you started.
relevant, or to be applicable on a daily basis?

You then score the importance of the difference,

as follows:

Relevance Application Morale Long-term

Relevance Relevance, 1 Morale, 1
Application
Morale
Long-term

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Step 4:

Now you identify the options with the highest
importance.
You do this by adding the total value for each
criteria option.
For example, if you noted Relevance, 1 and
Relevance, 3 in the table, the total score would
be 4.
Action: Tally up the scores from the table you
completed in step 3, and write them in below:

Criterion Total Score

Relevance

Application

Morale

Long-Term

Note: In Harrys case, he needs to do a separate Grid

Sometimes, once youve tallied the scores, two
or more criteria will have equal weighting. This
isnt a problem unless you are making a decision
in which its important to know which
st nd rd
option/criteria ranks 1 , 2 , 3 , and so on. With
this, youd need to make a choice between the
contenders, perhaps by re-evaluating your paired
comparison scoring, or simply by choosing
between the factors with the same score.
Grid Analysis
Analysis for each training area so that he can
choose one session in each. The sessions will be
his options, while the criteria that we worked out
the relative importance of (in the Paired
Comparison Analysis) will be the factors he needs
to consider.
Lets work through a Grid Analysis for the second
training area that Harry identified: Personal
Effectiveness.

Now that you know how the various decision

factors rank, you can use that information as part
of a Grid Analysis to evaluate each of the
sessions, and so choose the best session to do in
each training area.

To do a Grid Analysis, you list your options as

rows on a table, and the factors you need
consider as columns. You then score each
option/factor combination, weight this score by
the relative importance of the factor, and add
these scores up to give an overall score for each
option.

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Step 1:

First, you create a Grid Analysis matrix by placing column headings. Youll also need to add a
the various options that youre considering in the Weighting row (to use later).
row headings, and the decision factors in the

Relevance Application Morale Long-Term Total

Weighting
Stress Management
Dealing With Anger
Delegating

Step 2:

Next, you work your way down the columns of
your table, scoring each option for each of the
factors in your decision.
Action: Go through the table below, and score
each option from 0 (poor) to 5 (very good). This is
your raw score the score that you give each
option before you apply a weighting based on that
factor (next step). Weve filled in the first row for
you.
(Note that you do not have to have a different
score for each option if none of them are good
for a particular factor in your decision, then all
options should score 0, for example.)

Relevance Application Morale Long-Term Total

Weighting
Stress Management 2 4 3 5
Dealing With Anger
Delegating

Step 3:

The next step is to work out the relative To keep things simple in this example, ignore the
importance of the factors in the decision. For Paired Comparison Analysis you did earlier, and
Harrys decision, we did this with our Paired use the figures on the next page instead:
Comparison Analysis. (Note that its perfectly
acceptable to have factors with the same
importance.)

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Criterion Total Score

Relevance 3

Application 2

Morale 4

Long-Term 2

Action: Add the above weights to the table below. (Weve done the first one for you.)

Relevance Application Morale Long-Term Total

Weighting 3
Stress Management 2 4 3 5
Dealing With Anger 5 2 1 1
Delegating 4 5 2 3

Step 4:

Finally, you multiply the scores with the weighting
for each factor to give you a weighted score.
Then you add up the weighted scores for each
option. The option that scores the highest wins!
Action: Using the figures in the table above,
multiply the scores for each factor with its
weighting, and enter the weighted scores in the
table below. Then total the scores for each option.
(Weve done this already for the first option.)

Relevance Application Morale Long-Term Total

Weighting 3 2 4 2
Stress Management 6 8 12 10 36
Dealing With Anger
Delegating

And, thats it! You didnt allow room to second-guess yourself.

What you did was use an objective process to
You can be confident that the decision youve analyze subjective criteria, and you reached a
made satisfies Harrys decision criteria. You did good decision that you can explain easily to
not have to agonize over the smallest of details. others.

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3. Key Points
There is no such thing as a perfect decision Transfer this weighting to a Grid Analysis,
because you cant predict the future. and then rank each option according to
the weighted criteria to determine the best
If you search for the perfect solution you option.
effectively trap yourself and become paralyzed
you dont decide, because the decision you seek By using these decision-making tools you
does not exist. improve your confidence, decrease your stress,
and come out of your paralyzed state!
Effective decision making involves choosing what
appears to be the best option based on the
information you have.

To apply objective analysis to your decision

making:

Use Paired Comparison Analysis to

determine which factors are the most
important to your final decision.

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