Now.. how do I make the RIGHT decision???

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Making The Right Decisions

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Having detailed a few tools on how to avoid making WRONG decisions or getting blind-sided in my article "A Little Help Deciding". Now, it is worth spending a little time a tool to assist in making the RIGHT decisions.

This tool is valuable in both a personal requirement for decision making, or as a manager/owner of a business creating direction for staff and equipping them to make decisions for the success of your organization.

Scenario One: Personal - each arrow detailed below will represent individual choices and decisions that you face every day in your personal life

Scenario Two: Business - each arrow detailed below represents a staff member and the roles they serve within your organization.

As you follow down through the framework below, you may choose to select either of the Scenarios (above) or both.

The most important step in insuring your decisions are the correct ones, is to talk time, to determine what your overall goal is for your success. This is a critical step and may take minutes to hours to decide. Your goal cannot be a vague  broad scoping one.. ie: want my business to be successful, or I want to be rich. I MUST be very specific and measurable. Rather than wanting your business to be a success, you may want to be much more specific as to what will make it a success. Sell more??  - nope still too vague. Maybe, I want my business to grow 15% and insuring that we have 85% repeat customers and grow my customer base by 15%.
With the personal Scenario, rather than a goal of being rich, you may be much more specific. I want to decrease my spending by 20%, and invest that savings in investments. In two years I want a positive net worth.
Regardless of what you decided your goal to success it - is it so critical that it is narrow in focus, exactly what you want, and achievable. And it need not involve money, ic can be how you want to be perceived  liked, raise your children, or different career choices.

Once you have defined your goal, imagine it in the illustration below at the point of an arrow..

Now this is where it gets interesting, you will be faced (or your staff will be tasked) with many decisions, most common, we assess the choice and make the decision on the circumstances that surround us at the moment. Staff will make decisions based on the small section of the business that they are familiar, often in the dark of other requirements of the company success.. Therefore if we fill in the arrow to your goal, it will probably look like this:

The secret is to attempt to align individual decisions, or staff members - all directed toward your goal. EVERY decision, from what you eat, to what house you buy. In business, every staff member MUST be clearly instructed to ask the following:

Does this [choice] bring me closer to [my goal]? 

If the answer is yes, then it should be seriously considered, if the answer is no, then no matter how tempting, then that is not a direction to follow.

If this exercise is achieved for every decision, or each staff member follows this framework, then coming closer to your objectives will look more like this:

So why does it matter if all of your arrows align towards your goal. Well it is obvious that with every choice moving you towards your objective, then it will be reached much less painfully and significantly faster, and in a business scenario - much cheaper. 

Now lets take a look at grade 6 vector mathematics, to illustrate the efficiency of aligning your decisions and staff.

If you apply 100% of your effort toward one goal, and 100% of your effort towards a different goal. Then your net progress towards success is wasted effort, and you achieve much less that an addition of your two efforts.Or in a business scenario  you have one staff member you are paying for a day of work travelling in one direction, and another in a slightly different direction, you are only getting 1.5 days work and paying for 2. 

In extreme cases, full effort may be made for 2 choices, but counter each other (in respect to your goal) and you have worked hard, to achieve virtually nothing. In business, you may be paying for 2 days work, yet virtually throwing the money away. A real life example of a business case, would be a company deciding on a goal described above - 85% customer retention, 15% addition of new customers and a 15% revenue growth. Accounting decides on a new process that will make their work much easier, and a company at first glance much more efficient. However, the new process is clumsy, complicated for the customer.. resulting in losing customers, and pushing away new clients. Obviously, the decision to implement a new accounting system was not run through the simple question.. "Will changing our accounting system get us closer to our goal of 85% customer retention, 15% new clients, and 15% revenue growth". Expensive step in the wrong direction. This is how it looks like in vector addition. 

Now that you have clearly defined your goal and you hold every decision up to it, facing 2 decisions, applying 100% of your effort to both.. you waste no time, you leap towards your goal. You are not distracted by "fun", or "tempting" decisions that steer you away from your goal. ALL decisions become very simple.. Do they get me closer to my goal.. yes or no.. That easy.

Business, you are paying 2 staff to work 8 hours. Working toward the same goal. you get 16 hours worth of work for your 16 hours of pay. 

For personal decision making - define your goal.. and think of these arrows.

For Business.. as an owner or manager, define your business goals, communicate it clearly and often to ALL staff. and measure, measure, measure the success.

How to turn $20 into $20

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"...ensure the health and growth of the company you work for, and ultimately the security of your employment." 

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We do this almost daily, we enter a convenience store, select our milk and bread (or other required items), approach the cash register. The amount is tallied on the cash register, we reach into our wallets, select a twenty dollar bill, hand it to the cashier, they take it, put it in the register and hand you appropriate change, and are on our way.

Nothing notable in this, one would expect... but there is something significant that just transpired. A closer look might be interesting. I suggest, the next time you have the opportunity to watch a person in front of you in the register line.. Examine the body language of this transaction.

The customer looks closely at the total amount displayed on the cash register. It represents money, it is not a number.. it is value or a cost. Opening a wallet or purse, there is a very quick analysis of how much money is in there, as they flip through the bills, an instantaneous inventory of how much money remains, as a bill is subtracted from the total to cover the cost of the purchase.

Instantly, as the bill is handed to the clerk, it changes, in the hands of the clerk, it becomes valueless, it is just a piece of paper that will only be stuffed (rather disrespectfully) along with the stacks of money already in the till. It only becomes a number that will be counted at the end of the shift and recorded on a piece of paper for deposit. The deposit book is filled with numbers, not a value of what the money can buy, or how much work it took the customers to do to earn that cash... It is just a number on a spreadsheet that will later be added to a balance in a bank account.

I was pleased to be asked to speak at a hospitality business this coming weekend to assist in training their staff on customer service. The organization deals with the public spending their own money for their services (not business to business industry, but a consumer to business industry). I will be basing my presentation on the scenario above.

How would company representatives react to a new policy such as:

" If a client is not unconditionally satisfied and be without hesitation, willing to repeat the service again, the company representative would be required to pay all cost of the service personally and return all of the money to the customer from their own pocket." 

You have a decision, you are booking a vacation and have a choice of two resorts, nearly identical in service offerings, but one has a policy as detailed above, you are aware that if you are not completely satisfied with your expensive experience, the staff you interact with will open their wallets and pay your expense. You would know for a fact that every staff member you interact with would recognize the value of your money. They would not stuff your money in a register and treat it as a mere exchange of a piece of paper. They would ensure that you had a flawless experience, and go above and beyond to fix any issues that might arise. The decision of which resort you would travel to would be a very simple one... a service that you would be please to repeat again in the future.

Of course, this sort of policy does not exist, and never would. However, this extreme example serves a purpose. Having staff or being a company representative that pause before robotically jamming your money in a till, ensures that the client is happy with the exchange and will return as a repeat customer.

A company that maintains at all levels, from the staff that accepts clients payments, to the staff that deliver the service, to the management that decide the direction of the company, the ability to recognize the fact that the clients are giving them real twenty dollar bills, not just numbers on a deposit book will easily beat out their competition.

On a personal note, I have the pleasure of dealing with a local musical instrument company, Tony’s Music Box, where, when I hand them my money, I can easily sense that they are very aware and respect the value that money has to me and although there are other music stores I can purchase identical items,  I am loyal to this establishment for the positive experience.

Try these two items. One, examine the body language of a customer in front of you and how the money loses it value the moment it is in the cashiers hands, and two, reflect on a very positive service experience you have and in the past, and how the customer service representatives respected your money.

This is a very simple awareness for anyone working in an industry that serves the public that would ensure the health and growth of the company you work for, and ultimately the security of your employment.