Decision-making at a Glance

In this article, we give more details about the daily decision-making that we all do. Decisions have always been the foundation of organizational performance and competitiveness. Many successes and failures of organizations throughout the years have been attributed to a single, fate-altering decision.

Accordingly, massive pressure has been placed upon decision-makers to ensure that the best decision is made in a correct and timely manner.

Moreover, the advancements in data science have enabled data-driven decision-making or making decisions based on the results and evidence provided by data and analytics.

We humans make decisions every day. The number of decisions we make on a daily basis has been studied but there is no clear consensus. For example, some think that we make approximately 200 decisions about food only, while other think we make around 30,000 decisions a day.

We strongly believe that we all make many decisions daily, but we cannot advocate for a silver bullet number here as it is likely to vary a lot.

Decisions are about making choices amongst alternatives in order to reach a purpose. After we decide on something, we implement and monitor the outcomes.

We decide on what to say, how to dress, who to talk to, which route to take to work, etc. We also decide to hire, fire, allocate budgets, deploy resources, and stop project funding when things go wrong. Decisions are either short-term, medium-range, or long-term in terms of impact.

We make decisions individually, in groups of people, or with the aid of machines.