Safetogototown

  In my last post I introduced Colin Powell's 40 - 70 rule for decision making.  This rule dictates that decisions should be made when you possess no less than 40, and no more than 70 percent of available information.  With less than 40 percent of the information your decision is no better than a "stab in the dark".  This lower limit is relative easy to comprehend.  Without a map or knowledge of an area how do you travel to a given address.  Even if you have an accurate address a map guides you to the correct street in the correct city.  The upper limit is justified by balancing the time used to acquire the information with the utility of the information.  If a decision takes too long to make, opportunities could be lost, competitors could enter the market first or enemies could discover your strategies.  What I failed to present is how to fill in the missing information.  How do we confidently decide when we only have 70 percent of the ...

  In my last post  I explored how certain flexibilities gave us substantial freedom when making decisions.  Having an emergency fund allowed one to make monetary decisions without panicking.  Or how a salesperson attempts to accelerate your decision process buy making you focus on certain aspects of a decision, i.e. a monthly payment.  Another forced "panic" would be an implied scarcity.  "Buy now they won't last long."  Having certain flexible assets is important at a tactical and strategic level, but what about at an operational level?  When a decision is needed how long should it take?  The obvious answer is dependent on the decision itself.  Having acknowledged this variance, are there frameworks or guidelines to help us make decisions within an appropriate time frame. Before looking at any type of framework it would be best to review our basic decision making.  In its simplest form our decision making is comprised of a few basi...