"When you don't drive your own bus, it doesn't matter much where you plan to go, because you won't get there at all" Richard Bandler
INTRODUCTION
Making a decision always begins with deciding between Deciding or No Deciding. By Deciding, we are assuming the commitment with the results that are to be achieved, while by Not Deciding we show that we are interested in things happening, but without doing anything to achieve the desired results. What leads us to one thing or another, are our mental models and that is why we must analyze the Decision-Making processes based on them. Usually you decide to succeed and you avoid decisions when you want to avoid failure.
On the other hand, the decisions that we make can be some right and some wrong, but any of them must generate learning, however our models have taught us to fear failure, so we seek to avoid it, and therefore, we forget to work to achieve success, which leads us to think that the Decision-Making process is an internal process of the Human Being, which must be analyzed from within and not through the simple handling of Decision-Making techniques, which never we use, because life situations often do not give us time for it. This article is oriented to discover some elements that limit our effectiveness in Decision Making in all aspects of life.
We wish with this work, that the participant becomes aware that our models generate automatic attitudes in the individual, affecting decision-making and that through a process of reflection on it, it is possible to begin to generate new attitudes that allow them to make use of his inner freedom of action so as not to continue acting according to the STIMULUS-RESPONSE model, thus having the freedom to think and decide. It is also important to understand how our models sometimes play tricks on us when we try to make important decisions in our lives and how the orientation towards the pursuit of success is a better element than trying to avoid failure.
TAKE DECISIONS.
What precedes all our actions? What determines the actions we take? Of course: THE POWER OF DECISION.
Making a decision begins by: Deciding or Not Deciding. We will understand by Decide, the commitment to the results that you want to achieve, while No Decidir means being interested in things happening without doing anything to achieve the desired results.
The decision we make can be right or wrong, either of the two generates learning, which implies that, if we make mistakes, we must strive to learn from our mistakes, instead of punishing ourselves for it, because if we do not do it we will be destined to repeat them in the future, since we worry about what happened, which causes an exaggeration of things and thinking only about the fact of the past, feeding it itself, instead of dealing with new strategies to try it in different ways in the future.
Our ability to make decisions has to do with taking risks, being creative and looking for alternatives to problems or challenges that do not yet exist.
Those who take risks are not only the daring people who practice sports or extreme activities, we all must do it every day. What can we learn from those who do extreme activities? Who practice these activities; They are not crazy, nor are they detached from life, definitely not, they are mentally healthy people like all of us. Contrary to what it seems, they are very precise people, very constant, very prepared and very prudent to face difficult situations. The characteristics that they present are:
- They act intelligently in the preparation of their activities They think everything before they act They maximize their knowledge They carefully analyze the factors that could act against them They program their action according to the risk They imagine how things are going to work And finally they do.
Most people look for security and a pleasant and prosperous future, but they are too afraid of making mistakes, of failing, of not being able to fulfill their dreams and the fear of failure, when making mistakes, leads to fear of taking risks, that is normal, We are all afraid of failure, we are all scared, no one lives without feeling fear, fear is normal, it is the appropriate response in challenging situations, when we do something new, something unprecedented. Fear is one more emotion that we must know how to control, so as not to act from it, because fear paralyzes and paralysis is not a good companion in high-risk situations. The only thing we have to do in that case is ACT.
Fear can feed itself, when we feel fear, we become restless, the heart rate increases, breathing accelerates, we feel anxiety in the stomach, the internal temperature increases, the skin turns red, the skin bristles, the saliva disappears of the mouth, others show a pale complexion, which can cause paralysis as we already said and end in terror, the important thing about this is to realize the emotion that invades us and start talking to ourselves to establish the script to follow in the situation.
The greatest risk is not taking risks, we will never achieve what we want from life if we do not take some risks. Taking risks will put us in a position to live a more vital, satisfying, and fuller life.
TAKE DECISIONS.
In 1996, Andrés Galarraga obtained the lead in home runs and RBIs, and at some point someone asked him why there was always talk about his lead in home runs and RBIs, but nobody talked about the lead in strikeouts received, which he also obtained at that time.. The response of the Venezuelan big leaguer was something like: It's that to hit home runs you have to shoot him.
This should not surprise us, since at the end of the day, the juicy contract that Galarraga enjoyed at that time or that of any other important offensive player in the big top, is based on the ability of those players to hit well an average of 3 out of 10 times they go to bat. Well yes, as you hear it, they get paid that fortune for being wrong 7 out of 10. When a player, very exceptional, manages to be wrong only 6 out of 10, he is considered a great superstar, almost irreplaceable. Of course, these cases can be counted on the fingers of one hand and we still have some left over.
That same year we came across the case of Omar Vizquel, who received the Golden Glove, despite the fact that in that season Vizquel made a number of mistakes beyond his custom.
Many people thought that Vizquel would not get such an award as Short Stop, which is an award that is awarded based on the vote of the Major League Baseball Coaches. However, despite the number of mistakes made, Vizquel won the Prize. Many Managers were interviewed about why they voted for Vizquel and the answer, almost unanimous, was: "We voted for him because he covers more ground and therefore has a greater chance of making mistakes."
In these two examples there is a great learning: Both Galarraga and Vizquel at the time sought success in each play or in each attempt at bat. The achievement obtained is the product of the effort made to obtain success and from there obtain the Pleasure of Success. However, many people are left doing nothing, because they fear failure.
MAKE SUCCESS OR AVOID FAILURE.
Here is the key to Decision Making: How do we make decisions? Looking for success in what we do or trying to avoid failure, in order to look good to others. Definitely, when we take on making a decision, we are faced with the possibility of failing in what we do. If we see failure as a terminal process, we will be identifying ourselves with the role of losers or defeated. We must assume a different mental model, that is, a model in which failure is simply a temporary event, which makes it an unsatisfactory result, which must be corrected if we want to achieve success. The real failure is doing nothing.
A friend, who worked as a pilot for some commercial airlines, once told us: “When I travel from Caracas to Miami, I am practically off course 90-95% of the flight time, but since the flight instruments are very sensitive I spend my time correcting the course. However, I got to Miami smoothly and on time ”.
The moral of this is that it is not necessary to be right all the time to get where we want to go, but the important thing is to know how to correct the course. Decision making is nothing more than the generalization of this process that we have just narrated. In figure 1 we can see that it is possible to go from A to B, even when 100% of the time we are out of the correct direction (compare the complete lines with the dotted line).
Figure 1
What we have said is so important that that same pilot friend told us that in a few years ago it was a custom widely used by pilots who traveled in the afternoon (5 pm approximately) from Maracaibo to Santa Bárbara del Zulia, tune in On the radio help a popular station in Santa Bárbara del Zulia and cover the windows of the cabin with newspaper, so that the sun from the front and the heat it generated would not bother them. That flight was traveling at an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,300 m. Approx.). Once the estimated flight time was almost over, they proceeded to remove the newspapers and land. However, on one occasion, the flight attendant made a mistake and did not tune in to the Santa Bárbara station, but rather tuned in to another station of the same chain, but in the city of Valera. Of course,When the estimated flight time passed and removing the newspapers, because the height was only about 3,000 m., they found themselves with the surprise of being in front of a mountain very close to the city of Valera (in the Venezuelan Andes we find mountains between 2,500 and 5,000 m., so the planes fly at more than 15,000 feet) and due to this circumstance they crashed into it and all the occupants of the plane died. For a long time there was speculation about what caused that plane to crash off course (there was talk of kidnapping, sabotage, someone who wanted to commit suicide) and the final report with the results of the case was never made public, without However, many pilots knew what the truth of the event was.They found themselves with the surprise of being in front of a mountain very close to the city of Valera (in the Venezuelan Andes we find mountains between 2,500 and 5,000 m., so the planes fly at more than 15,000 feet) and due to this circumstance they crashed against her and all the occupants of the plane died. For a long time there was speculation about what caused that plane to crash off course (there was talk of kidnapping, sabotage, someone who wanted to commit suicide) and the final report with the results of the case was never made public, without However, many pilots knew what the truth of the event was.They found themselves with the surprise of being in front of a mountain very close to the city of Valera (in the Venezuelan Andes we find mountains between 2,500 and 5,000 m., so the planes fly at more than 15,000 feet) and due to this circumstance they crashed against her and all the occupants of the plane died. For a long time there was speculation about what caused that plane to crash off course (there was talk of kidnapping, sabotage, someone who wanted to commit suicide) and the final report with the results of the case was never made public, without However, many pilots knew what the truth of the event was.000 feet) and for this circumstance they crashed into it and all the occupants of the plane died. For a long time there was speculation about what caused that plane to crash off course (there was talk of kidnapping, sabotage, someone who wanted to commit suicide) and the final report with the results of the case was never made public, without However, many pilots knew what the truth of the event was.000 feet) and for this circumstance they crashed into it and all the occupants of the plane died. For a long time there was speculation about what caused that plane to crash off course (there was talk of kidnapping, sabotage, someone who wanted to commit suicide) and the final report with the results of the case was never made public, without However, many pilots knew what the truth of the event was.
What went wrong in this case? The possibility of realizing that they were going the wrong way to correct it. In other words, flying blind is not a recommended technique. However, when we evade our responsibility to decide and let others decide, we are making the decision to fly blind and doing so is dangerous, since we can crash and the consequences can be terrible.
Thomas Alva Edison, who is the most prolific inventor in the history of mankind, once remarked: "I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward." Note that Edison did not speak of failure but of erroneous intent.
Again we are facing the same pattern: The mental model "failure", leads us to give up trying, on the other hand the mental model "I still have not achieved it", leads us to continue trying to achieve the result. This "failure" model is related to the "try" model. When you say, "I'm going to try to do it," you're really saying, "I try a few times and if I don't succeed, I just leave it at that."
In the case of the "do" model, when we say "I'm going to do it," it is really saying "I'm going to try as many times as necessary until I finally do it."
DECISIONS AND PROACTIVITY.
Proactivity involves acting before, and to act before we have to decide and to decide, it is necessary to assume the responsibility of facing the consequences of our decisions. Responsibility means ABILITY to RESPOND. It is the ability we have to choose our answer. People who make effective decisions are proactive, since their attitudes are the product of their own decisions, based on values, rather than being the product of their conditioning or feelings. The more proactive we are, the less we tend to blame others for the things that happen to us. Freedom is a condition derived from the environment. You have several options to choose from. Freedom implies exercising those options, through our own inner strength, since that is the basis of being proactive.Proactivity in general implies not waiting for things to happen to decide and act.
When you just wait for things to happen, without deciding, you are acting reactively. The reactive person acts based on what happens to him, without anticipating anything at all. In this way, decisions are forced by the situation and always present only one alternative for action. When you are proactive, you have multiple alternatives to decide.
Anything that is familiar to us is difficult to recognize and even more difficult to change when doing so is painful or causes us problems. After all, how do I know something new will be better? The answer is, you won't know if you don't try. Although many people long for something better and have the opportunity to obtain it, they always have to fight a battle against the comfort of familiarity. Once you leave the familiar, you obviously enter the unknown, the uncomfortable, this is what most of us are scared of. This is where the pain of change means giving up the familiar to delve into the unknown. This pain is known as insecurity or anxiety.
We just need to change our attitude and learn new personal skills. We can all do it. The parts that we need we already have, it is only a matter of becoming familiar with them and understanding and expanding their use.
What makes it possible to increase our feeling of self-esteem is being willing to open up to new possibilities to try them and then, if they fit, practice using them until they are truly ours. On this is based taking advantage of our power to decide and creating the habit of facing life assuming our actions with responsibility.
Sometimes making a decision creates a lot of pain and discomfort in the short term, with a deep sense of failure, but then, in the long term, it becomes pleasant.
Figure 2 shows us how this decision process between pleasure and pain works.
The critical moment to make a decision occurs when we perceive that a situation that has been deteriorating towards pain begins to suffer stagnation, generating in us the false feeling that the worst is over. However, it is from this moment that whatever happens tends to further deteriorate the situation until it reaches a point where there is no other option and we must assume our decision, with a serious deterioration of our self-esteem.
To get out of this deadly trap it is necessary to link making an important decision with pleasure (in the long term) and not making it with pain. Understand that short-term pain is the price to pay for long-term pleasure.
6 STEPS TO MAKING DECISIONS.
We are going to provide a 6-step guideline for making important decisions in our life.
1. Make it clear what you really want to achieve and what is preventing you from doing so now. For it:
- Set Goals Act with Sincerity Act with Integrity View the situation as an opportunity rather than a threat Identify all the elements that keep you from making the right decision.
2. Achieve leverage: Associate strong pain in not deciding now and great pleasure in making the decision now.
3. Disrupt patterns of thought, feeling, and action that limit you from acting appropriately. Remember that:
- No decision made to resolve a situation must be made at the same level of thought in which said situation was generated. Mental models and beliefs significantly influence decision-making.
4. Create new alternatives that are truly empowering. Look for alternatives that bring you closer to pleasure or success and away from pain or failure.
- Use your creativity to generate empowering alternatives. The creative process consists of a sequence of DEFROST-ACCUMULATE-DELIBERATE-INCUBATE-ILLUMINATE-ACCOMMODATE-FINISH-REINFORCE.
4.1. DEFROST: It involves breaking the ice to remove obstacles that can damage creativity. This leads us to develop new models and beliefs to act.
4.2. ACCUMULATE: Gather the data, collect the information and provide new data.
4.3. DELIBERATE: Analyze and discuss the data and stratify the information.
4.4. INCUBATE: It is to allow time to allow the information to flow.
4.5. ILLUMINATE: Identify possible solutions and alternatives. This is the… aha !.
4.6. FINISH: Make the decision in such a way that everyone knows the what, how, when and who.
5. Condition your new action guidelines, until they are consistent. Ensure the long-term success of the decision.
5.1. REINFORCE: Reassess the decision. Strengthen ourselves to offer each one the opportunity to reaffirm the decision.
6. Test your decisions and give them time to begin to produce their positive effects.
The check involves doing the following:
6.1. Make an ecological review of your decision in the system. (Check it within your principles and values).
6.2. Visualize the possible effects of your decision in the short, medium and long term.
6.3. Put it to the test, giving it time to have its positive effects.
PROBLEMS AND CONSEQUENCES IN DECISION-MAKING.
The most common problems in Decision Making processes are the following:
- Unpunctuality Undetected connections with other problems Failure to comply with the sequences to properly decide Failure to follow up on decisions Failure to establish clear rules of direction Make the decision reactively because time is up Decision maker's paralysis Insecurity and lack of confidence Excess of confidence that leads one to believe that things do not happen to one Lack of personal clarity Personal indefiniteness Excessive fears
There are a number of external elements that help decision-making processes, however, we must always keep in mind that the most important are those that are within us. These elements are:
- Well-defined indicators Statistical process control charts Trend charts Histograms Pareto and Cause-Effect diagrams for ranking Decision trees Management information systems
What are the consequences of inadequate decision-making? Let's see next, what consequences an inappropriate decision-making brings in the organizational field.
- Demotivation in the staff Insecurity Poor personal appreciation Crisis management Staff turnover Waste in every way Upsetting staff Inconsistency Lack of commitment
An organization that does not create in its management staff the awareness of what it means to make decisions, is putting its own survival at stake. Deciding is a critical process at every moment of organizational life and also in personal life.
DECISIONS AND CHANGE.
When an organization wants to carry out a change process, it is necessary to start from a series of important elements, such as:
- Have constructive nonconformity Have absolute clarity of the desired state Have clarity about the initial steps of the process, that is, today Promote anticipation and participation to generate innovative learning.
Once the conditions required for the change have been established, it is required:
- To have clarity of the current state, to know where we are starting from. To have clarity of the desired state, to go as directly as possible. To have clarity about the fact that the desired state does not arrive only because it was desired and evoked by us. the two states (current and desired), there is a transition period that can be more or less long, depending on the magnitude of the change (lead the transition state) Establish clear feedback mechanisms to adequately lead the transition and decide the need of settings.
All this must be accompanied by an attitude oriented towards permanent improvement, in the end:
"For the walker, the important thing is the path, not the goal." Lao Tse.
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