Recently I've been thinking about how to make a good decision. So much of it seems obvious, and yet I consistently fail to do it.
The right information
Good decisions need the right information. As a consequence, they need to be:
Bespoke - Your situation is different to that one you read about on the internet. You need to apply your own information.
Timely - Make a decision too early and you lack useful information; too late and you've already wasted resources.
Collaborative - Different people's information needs to be pooled effectively. Adversarial meetings don't do that.
An interesting side effect of 2) is that amalgamating decisions together isn't smart - it's rarely the right time to make all of them. The cost of gathering information can change that, but it's worth bearing in mind.
No cognitive biases
Being informed doesn't count for much if you don't use the information well. To avoid wasting what you've learnt, good decisions should be:
Considered - It takes time to think through the consequences of each action, and to have new ideas. Hurrying hinders good decisions.
Impartial - Biases are bad, whether they're due to justifying past decisions or the effect of the decision on you. Get rid of them.
Prudent - There's a right time to go all-in, and a right time to hedge your bets. It depends on the risk-reward relationship.
Positive - Letting the default option happen to you because you can't make up your mind is very rarely going to be optimal.
Staying impartial seems to me the problem that scales least well as an organisation grows. Even in a company of just 20 people I find I need to repeat to myself "What's best for GoCardless".
Constantly under review
A good decision can suddenly become a bad one when new information arises. Avoiding that requires that decisions are:
Monitored - Information evolves, and most actions are adjustable. If there's potential benefit to revising a decision, revisit it.
Testable - If possible make creating the information that will test a decision a priority. You'll learn faster.
Of course, it's not just existing decisions that should be kept under review. There's a much more general point about being proactive, not reactive.