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What's the most important thing you do as a leader of your business? Well, you make decisions, and it's all about the steady progression of moving from operator to owner in your business. Ultimately, decisions should be made at the lowest possible level of your organisation. And if you're making all of the decisions, you've got some work to do. And in this six part series, we'll go through the five F's of better decision making, the framework will help get the craziness out of your head and onto paper so that you can reduce procrastination and advance the ideas you have even faster to download a PDF copy of decide already the five apps of decision making, as well as a downloadable worksheet on the subject so that you can make faster and better decisions in your life and business. Slide on Over to simplifying entrepreneurship.com five apps, that's simplifying entrepreneurship.com forward slash number five, the letter F, and the letter S, the facts, well, how important are the facts? They're pretty darn important in making a better decision, aren't they? You know, it all started last week with the future and having full clarity of what you want the good and the bad of this decision. And, you know, what if we win? And what if we don't win? And the vision of that, as we have this idea as to what does it look like to win? And what does it look like to lose, we dig into the facts, and I like to put them in two different buckets. The first bucket is the facts that we know. And then the other bucket is the facts that we need to know right, we're going to dig into that. And we're going to really leave sort of the figures out of it. Because the figures side of it, the number side of it is really step number three in the five apps. But we'll dig into the facts a little bit around the figures in next week's episode. So this week, we're going to talk a little bit about the role of data and research in the decision making process. You know, the the role of facts, really, and here are some of the reasons why data and research play a crucial role in decision making, at least as I see them anyway. And the first one is objectivity and the data and research really provide objective evidence that can help you make more informed decisions. And one of the things over the years that I'll raise my hand and say, I've been one of these people that I don't always dig through the facts maybe as much as I should I need to surround myself with people that are good fact finders, because I'm okay. Generally with just an executive summary. I don't need to dig into as much of the detail as maybe I should. What about you? Are you a Fact Finder? Are you want these people that needs all the information before you make the decision? Sometimes you need to have somebody on your team that can help you even get a bit more so that decision making is made even a little better. Right? You also have to understand the validity of the data. Is it credible? Is it really backed by any evidence at all? Is it well reasoned? This can really help build trust and confidence among not only your your decision making, but your team and your stakeholders and your customers around this decision? Is it efficient? By using the data and research to inform your decisions? You can identify patterns and trends and insights that can help you make even more effective choices. When you think of some of the data? Can you plug it into graphs? Can you plug it into different ways of thinking about things so that you can make decisions even faster, it can lead to better resource allocation, improved processes, and really higher levels of success for your business. Because when you have quicker more expeditious decision making your business grows quicker, you are able to break through those ceilings. Now that we've established the importance of data and research and decision making, and we'll explore a few practical tips for gathering and analysing some of it as well. You know, gathering and analysing relevant information is so, so important. One of my friends, Ari Mizel. He's been on the podcast before, actually. But he uses this concept called the external brain, which is really cool. Because as people, we have lots of stuff in our brain that helps us make decisions, but sometimes you just can't store it all. So how are you storing? How are you gathering all of the decision making facts and figures that you need in order to make this decision? So it helps when you start off the fact process by really identifying your information needs. And before you can gather and conduct the research, you need to identify the specific information you need to make from the informed decision. And that started back in the future component of last week. Right? That's the what do we win and what do we lose component of this and what do we need to get in order to make the decision happen? The second step is to choose the right data sources and to ensure that decisions are made based on accurate and reliable information, it's so crucial to choose the right data sources, it might include internal data from your business. It might include external reports, or market research, or maybe customer feedback or insights from trusted experts. There's a variety of data sources, but so important to be picking the right ones, or else your decision might be skewed and probably will be skewed. You got to use the mix of qualitative and quantitative data. And we talked about this a little bit off the bat. This episode is more a little bit about the qualitative information. And next week's episode on figures is more about the quantitative information. But the quantitative data can provide objective insights and the qualitative data will help you understand the subjective factors and emotions that may be influential of your decision. And you need to mix a little bit of both. After you've got all that data, now it's time to analyse it. Once you've gathered it, it's essential to really sit down with it, understand it on a global sort of big picture scale. It might involve using some visualisation tools. Some people are really good at visualising stuff, and others aren't. And if you're one that isn't, then put it into some sort of format that's going to help you visualise what it is you're about to make the decision upon. You got to interpret the findings and communicate the insights to everybody involved in the decision. by interpreting the findings, really, it's, it's all around considering what the data is telling you and how it can help you make more informed decisions and how it can help you and your team and your clients have that better life. And then we come into communicating them. It's so important to communicate your findings to your team and your stakeholders, share your insights, explained the rationale behind your decisions, and discuss how the data supports your choices. This is the final F piece that we're going to dig into a little more thoroughly around the feedback portion of the decision before we come to the final decision, right, we're going to be continuously updating and refining this data until we make that final decision. And even after the final decisions, there are no perfect decisions, sometimes we need to make it with the best information that we have, and then adjust it on the fly afterwards. And that's the idea here of moving the ball. That's the idea of entrepreneurial growth, we need to just go ahead and make a decision and move ahead. Because if you're paralysed with a procrastination, of never being able to make those big decisions, your business simply won't grow. So think about how you assemble facts, how you store facts, and how you use facts to help you make better decisions based on the future that you determined in that first step of the decision activator platform. Next week, we'll dig into the figures, that middle half of the five apps of decision making. And it's an important one and it's one that some people just tend to overlook. But you know, as with all five of these pieces, if you overlook any of them, you're not going to get the best decision that you can for your business in your life as an entrepreneur. So think about how you assemble facts for decision making and how your team does do and go and make it a great day. And ironic media production, visit us at our ONICK media.com
