FREE MANAGEMENT CONSULTING COURSE on www.oeconsulting.be Decision-making How ? Multiple-criteria decision technique is an evaluation method in order to make rationally a choice between several alternatives on the basis of more than 1 criteria. The steps are : List of alternatives or choices List of important criteria required for your decision Give a score (e.g. on 10) on each criteria for each alternative Give a % weight to each criteria if one criteria is more important than the other (sum of criteria weight is 100%) Multiply each score with its weight and sum up to have the total for each alternative Rank all alternatives from high to low Tip : A bad result does not automatically indicate a bad decision, or vice versa (maybe external factors!) We rely too often on emotions instead of research (but remember plain things, plain decision!) Having an influence on decision making, don’t be easily convinced for : Nice plausible stories that are told : Reject the easy and obvious answers that someone comes up with. Not everything that seems plausible is true. Don’t judge outcomes without looking at underlying forces : sometimes what is presented as the root cause, is actually the consequence and vice versa. E.g. beautiful women advertising for cosmetics We don’t detect what is absent – we see the success but what about the ‘hidden’ failures? Often success is attributed to ability, while failure is caused by external factors. Big contrasts compromises our judgement: Big contrasts between things can be misleading : We judge something if we have something completely the opposite in front of us. We have difficulty with absolute judgments. We don’t notice small gradual changes. When a single aspect dazzles us, it affects how we see the whole picture. E.g. a single quality that produces a positive or negative impression and that outshines everything which make the overall effect disproportionate. We see what we want to see: People choose numbers for a lottery thinking it makes a difference or people throw dice harder thinking it makes a difference for a high number. We identify or just invent a pattern and ‘believe in it’ without considering it first as pure chance. We interpret new information so that our prior conclusions remain intact. E.g. reading opinions on the internet, illusion of “no pain no gain” where there is no concrete result,…