You want to make decisions that align with your company's goals. How do you get started?

Understand the situation or task at hand. Understand the plan. Understand the desired outcome. Understand risks. Have a solid action plan. Execute!!!!

To align your decisions with your company's goals, start by thoroughly understanding those goals. Dive into your company's mission, vision, and strategic objectives. Familiarize yourself with key performance indicators and any relevant initiatives or projects.

A simple process would be to understand the goals and measurements, review the project and the impact on the business, talk with your leaders for guidance, prioritize what you will do, communicate your plan, and execute.

The first step is to identify who wants your input and why, what is the goal of this exercise. Rather than imagine what is sought, spend your time and determine the need.

When assessing the situation it’s important to consider the degree of autonomy you would have to make decisions. I encourage teams to think about type 1 and type 2 decisions (coined by Jeff Bezos) consider what type of decision you are trying to make, the benefit and risk. What’s most important is to ensure you can clearly articulate your rational for the decision and ground this to benefits for what the company values.

When making a decision I always encourage my team to think about and articulate the following 1. What is the problem or challenge we are trying to solve 2. What is the proposed action / solution 3. What are the alternatives you have considered. This is important as it shows critical thinking and not jumping to conclusions 4. What is the decision you have arrived at and what are you seeking? Is it a FYI to your leader a request for endorsement (be clear on what you are asking or telling)

Define the objective and what will be achieved by investing the time and energy needed to fulfill this task. Having a clear view of the goal or goals will allow you to concentrate your efforts to accomplish the mission.

There must be a plan B and plan C not just a plan A which will require judgment and skill which may require brain storming with others if you are permitted to collaborate with others. If not, sleep on it. Perhaps you can come up with a better angle by tasking your sleeping subconscious mind with the task.

The step above mentions the idea of using SMART objectives. Of course this is great but only if the important characteristics have measures. Most key characteristics have softer aspects. Let's look at selecting someone for a leadership position. We might say we want a team player, clear communicator, strong leader, etc. Before generating alternatives to evaluate decision makers MUST create the measures by which to evaluate the options. This does not mean all evaluation characteristics need a quantifiable measure. But it does mean that the decision makers must define how they will measure how well an option performs.

Most decision makers do a fantastic job of describing the upside of an option. Decisions don't typically fail because they delivered too much upside. They fail because of some downside that either was overlooked or underestimated. I recommend the decision makers ask and answer the "What's the downside" question before implementation.

Always organize the various optional solutions by most likely through least likely to help your superior, and always present why by pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

We tend to confuse the outcome of a decision with the effectiveness of the process used to make it. Good outcome means good decision making, right? WRONG! If you tossed a coin to make the decision and it worked would that be your decision-making process for future decisions? I suggest evaluating the decision process separately from evaluating the decision outcome.

Learn by this experience and see if the outcome could be improved with some tweaking. Few things are perfect the first time. Learn to improve.

Assessing the situation involves understanding the current state, desired outcomes, and potential risks using tools like SWOT or PESTLE analysis. Define the problem or goal clearly, considering stakeholders' needs. Generate and evaluate alternatives through brainstorming, then choose the best option aligning with company goals. Plan implementation and anticipate challenges. Monitor and review outcomes, collecting feedback to learn from successes and failures, celebrating achievements, and sharing best practices. Always organize solutions by likelihood and present advantages and disadvantages to your superior for informed decisions.

Consult your Big Picture Strategy. Use your Values, Vision and Mission as filters for every decision you make. If it is aligned with those, then go for it. If it's not, then don't do it. What is your promise to your customers and who are they? Focus on that to make decisions.