Get better outcomes through better decisions

The business that adapts to growth opportunities fastest, wins.

Adapting to growth opportunities is a business outcome.

People forget that they can’t control business outcomes. There are too many variables in real-world conditions to be able to account for them all.

To get good outcomes, we have to increase the effectiveness of the things we can control.

An input to good outcomes is good decisions.

UX and market research are poised to have a tremendous impact here.

They can impact outcomes by enabling businesses to make better decisions.

Improving decision-making carries two key challenges.

1. Identifying the information used as an input to a decision
2. Learning from decisions as a way to influence future outcomes

For the former, better information yields better outcomes. We have all heard the axiom,

Garbage in, garbage out.

For the latter, we must recognize that outcomes are important. However, learning from an outcome is dangerous. You can have great decisions that yield awful outcomes. Conversely, you can have awful decisions that yield incredible outcomes.

We can’t control outcomes. We learn more by studying the decision itself and questioning (independent of the outcome) whether the best decision was made at the time.

Start making better decisions with these principles.

Making a decision means choosing from a set of alternative courses of action to address a particular problem or opportunity. Good decisions start with these three things:

• Define the problem: You must have clarity on the problem before deciding on how best to address it.
• Check your assumptions: Rapid learning and course correction are key components of an agile decision-making process.
• Seek quality data: Remember, garbage in, garbage out.

Although we can’t control outcomes, we can influence them.

Better decisions influence better outcomes.

This post was created with Typeshare