What are decisions?

'A decision is made when we choose one alternative from a set of two or more alternative solutions to a particular problem.'

Three aspects of making a decision:

• We have a problem;
• We have a set of two or more alternative solutions to the problem;
• We choose one of these alternatives as THE solution to the problem.

Whenever we make a decision, we are using some criteria to evaluate each of the alternatives so that we can choose the best one. Sometimes we may not be aware what the criteria are, but they are always there.

We now have four aspects of making a decision:

• We have a problem;
• We have a set of two or more alternative solutions to the problem;
• We have a criteria to use to provide a comparative 'value' for each of the alternatives;
• We choose one of these alternatives as THE solution to the problem based on its value according to the criteria.

Every decision is an attempt to choose a solution to a problem.
A decision is only meaningful if there are at least two alternative solutions to choose from.

To make an effective choice between the alternatives we need to establish some criteria to use to compare the alternatives.

Using the criteria we can give a value to each of the alternatives.

By comparing the values of each alternative we can choose the best one.

The alternative we choose is our solution to the problem, it is our decision.