FOCUS ON BETTER OUTCOMES

Thinking about Decisions

Decisions come in many forms and sizes. When we start considering alternatives, choosing hypotheses to test, and actions to take, this is when our thinking starts to have impact on ourselves and others. It is at decision points where good thinking becomes essential and it has the most beneficial impact on outcomes. It follows that we should focus on better outcomes by concentrating on how to deploy good thinking at the key points in the decision process.

We can use the DECIDE decision process

Choosing which decisons to invest our energy in is vital. This choice is best made based on triage. The triage categories for problems are:

0. Unsolvable: Problems which are unsolvable, regardless of the importance of the outcome
I. Urgent: Time critical problems where investing in finding a solution will have positive outcomes.
II. Important: Problems which can be delayed, but solving them is worthwhile.
III. Irrelevant: Problems where the impacts are not significant, whether they are solved or ignored.

It is best to ignore the “0. Unsovable” and the “III. Irrelevant” problems.
Then invest in order of priority. “I. Urgent “and then “II. Important”.

The DECIDE Model was choosen as as a good framework suited to the application of Thinking Paradigms to improve thinking quality. This is not simply because it has an excellent acronym, although that is certainly a useful characteristic. (It exploits the Availability Paradigm to make the model more memorable, and hence more useful and compelling.) It also has the merit of being quite simple and practical to use. It does not rely on any complex scientific language or esoteric meta-cognition concepts to understand it.

The DECIDE model

The DECIDE Model was designed in 2008 by K L Guo at the University of Hawaii-West Oahu to improve medical practioners’ decision making. It is used to make medical practioners deliver good thinking in life and death situations. We have here a developed and adapted DECIDE model to broaden it’s application to include decisions relating relating to solution creation, as well as the ‘diagnose, act, review’ context that inspired its creation. But of course, we kept its excellent name.