Effective Executive - Elements of Decision making

The effective executive doesn't take many decisions.

He will try to solve the problem at the highest level of abstraction.

When he comes across an issue, he will think about whether it is a symptom of a larger problem that needs to be solved or is it a one time incident and takes a decision at the appropriate level.

There are five elements of decision making

1. Try to find the most generic problem for a decision is being made.

2. Determine what are the conditions that must be satisfied by the decision. What are the boundary conditions that need to be satisfied for the decision to be true.

3. Think through what is right before and a solution which fully satisfies the conditions before thinking of compromises to make the decision work.

4. No decision is taken until it is converted into action steps and some one is made responsible for the actions.

5. Finally a feedback  mechanism should be in place to periodically check if the decision is working.
and is still valid.

Always assume that the problem is generic and try to solve for it.