Applying Decision “Weights”

This month’s Inspiring Innovations LEARNING MOMENTS podcast is all about trying a “Weights” system to improve your life and workplace decision-making process. Is the podcast message a little confusing… yes…but so is basic decision-making. Does every decision include “weight” factors that vary based on the occupation you have, the business you own, how old you are, where you live and the people you trust to give you great advice? I told you the podcast makes you really think!!

My 1-5 Weighting System recommendation does not make decision-making much easier. However, I believe it will give you insight as to what factors most influence a certain decision. Then YOU have to decide if you are giving all considerations a fair contribution to the decision… or just one or two major ones. 

Enjoy the listen a couple times! 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello again and welcome to the October 2025 Inspiring Innovations Learning Moments October 25th podcast. As always, this is your discussionist host, Marv Pickla. And once more, I'm pleased to report that this month's Learning Moments topic is one that has been suggested by a longtime listener. You know I really appreciate the feedback. But before we introduce that topic, I want to remind everyone that this learning moments format is always wide open to professionally and progressively discuss all topics that are recommended that make sense and requested. Plus, isn't it just good and fun that naturally every topic seems to find its related way into our at least one or more of the topic, principle, development areas we try and focus on leadership, communication, professional development, and of course innovation. So finding and sharing thoughts about each topic is fun, and you know it's ever changing. This month, this month, we're going to discuss a different approach as to how and why we can make even better decisions, especially on high value issues. The title of this month's learning moments discussion is applying decision weights. Did you get it? Applying decision weights. So again, let me start the discussion with an explanation of what I mean by decision weights. First, consider all of the factors you think about when making a key decision. About anything that has a huge impact on you, whether it's a personal life decision or one related to the job you have, what things, issues do you really consider? I mean really consider during an important decision time. Well I'll tell you if you tell me you mostly go with your gut feeling, I guess I would probably say that that might be a workable opportunity action, but it's mostly reactionary. And reactionary decision making, you know, may be a little weak in the long term or having a strong approach to what you really need to do. Again, that's sometimes your gut is right on, but most times giving yourself just a little extra time to think it through and kind of assess the situation usually helps. Think hard about your past approaches and what you considered and maybe how you weighted, you know, put weights on each appropriate concern area as more or less important when making the final decision. Did you really thoughtfully prioritize different parts of the decision or just limit the factors you had to or wanted to consider and professionally ignored the rest? Think about it. Well, for the balance of this inspiring innovations learning moments podcast, we're going to discuss a small group of what I believe important factors in making good to great decisions and why I believe usually applying decision weights to each on maybe like a one to five scale. One meaning it's kind of important to the decision, and five meaning that it's critically important to the decision, and then consider if this process might really help. Okay, you ready? Let's start. As always, as you might guess, cost is and will always be an enormous factor in all major decisions. So assuring that we apply at least a three to that decision area is uh totally logical because cost will never be a concern that will go away. It will always be there no matter what the issue is. Now I can already hear many listening saying, Marv, doesn't you know your weights depend on the issue? Mm-hmm, right, I agree. But in a way, applying different decision weights allows you to scale up or scale down based on the issue you're thinking about. Okay, I'm trying to explain it good, so you know you might have to check this podcast out twice. Moving on, though, a second area I consider important is your own experience, personal and professional experience in the area needing a solid decision. Has the open communication on the issue been good, you know, regular, or are you totally relying on just some other person's history or what other people have told you? You know, what's your experience on it? Have you made like good or maybe not so good decisions in this area in the past? And that maybe you need to adjust whatever decision weight you want to apply to consider your past personal experiences on that one to five scale? Think of it. Next, let's think about benefit impacts of what this decision will mean that's that's under review. Will the benefits of your decision be immediate or evolve over a longer term of implementation? Okay, is it right now or is it one of those building kind of decisions? Similarly, it will be important to apply a quality decision weight based on the size of who and what the decision will have, what impact will it have? Will it impact a hundred people, a hundred companies, or maybe only six or seven? You know what I'm saying? Assessing both the multiple benefits of your decision and the related size of impacts, those size of impacts, maybe on your customers, are all critical decision weighting considerations. It's worth the time. Okay, the last two decision weight areas I'd like to talk about and recommend would be cultural influences on your workplace and it's what it does a decision point you to the future, future ish outcomes. Again, by cultural influences, I'm referring to the progressive impacts the pending decision may have on advancing the positive, progressive culture individually, andor whatever group is involved or impacted by the decision you're thinking about. To me, this should reflect a high weight score anytime. Okay, the influence on those working around you and having a future look. You know, it should hopefully score high all the time, but that's the innovation coming out of me. And again, likewise, a decision with always futurish outcomes in mind really it sets a natural forward-thinking mindset for everybody, and no matter the issue or situation. If you make a decision just being adequate instead of necessary for advancement, did I say that right? Yeah, that the decision should not be just adequate, it should be necessary for advancement. Because if if it's just for adequate, then it's really not a non-decision, especially in my consultant world. Okay, it is time for the bottom line for this Inspiring Innovations Learning Moments podcast. I believe in order to be the best decision maker, no matter the issue, it would be professionally helpful to begin applying decision weights to the multiple factors that you consider maybe high value or low value, and in then making effective, efficient, progressive, and with the future in mind decisions. Some of the suggestions I've included, but certainly it's not limited to that five high, one low priority scale is cost, personal and professional experience, benefits received, and size of the impact, your work culture influences around you and in other workplaces, and of course, its impact on future ish outcomes, cost, experience, benefits and size, work culture, futurisms. They all make a difference. Well, I believe we've used our podcast time wisely. Give applying decision weights a professional try and let me know how it how it works for you. And as always, thanks so much for listening. I appreciate each and every one of you, and we will discuss more next month.