How do we make sure we make effective personal decisions? This two part lesson shall outline a model which will help you in making effective personal decisions. Let’s take a look.
Take this lesson to learn more and don’t forget to take the accompanying quiz at the end of the lesson.
When we must decide in a complex situation, it pays to use an efficient and robust system to ensure consistently effective decisions. We encourage the use of a model called FAMe to help us do so.
Here’s what FAMe stands for:
- ‘F’ in FAMe stands for ‘Fact Check’
- A in FAMe stands for ‘Generate Alternatives’
- Me in FAMe stands for Methodologies, as in, using structured decision-making Methodologies to help you think and make more informed decisions.
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Let’s explore the FAMe model at length before learning to use it in the context of a decision-making scenario.
F: Fact Check, Verify Beliefs / Assumptions
Meaning:
Verify the beliefs/ assumptions, including data that you are working with. Ask yourself, how do you know your beliefs/ assumptions and data are true or valid?
Knowledge is different from believing/ having faith in/ doing it because it is how things are always done around the place. How can we be sure that the facts that we have before us are right or valid? In what context are these valid?
Very often we need to determine whether the stated problem is the real issue or just a symptom of something deeper. We need a way to reality-test our perceptions. It could be that our evaluation of a situation is one person’s subjective assessment of that situation.
It might help to consider another person’s view of the situation, as well. It is imperative to note that in some situations, an outsider’s view may be more accurate, while most people involved in the situation tend to view things through the lens of their own emotions or biases.
We need to verify the facts through a systematic investigation before we can commence the decision-making process. Only this will enable us to fully understand the situation and thus make an objective decision.
A: Generate Alternatives (Avoid binary ‘either/ or’ thinking)
Once the facts of the case have been verified, then one must generate alternative solutions or decisions to choose between.
Avoid binary, either/ or thinking. Are there only two alternatives available for you to choose between with respect to the decision that you are making? Could there be other alternatives that you could choose between?
The key is to widen the options or alternatives before you. This will enable you to decide based on merit and not on insufficient data.
The wider the options you explore, the better your final decision is likely to be.
Generating different options may seem to make your decision more complicated at first, but the act of coming up with alternatives forces you to dig deeper and look at the problem from different angles.
Important: Also, the alternatives you will generate are most often based on how effectively you have Fact checked your data. In the absence of a fact-checking and data validation exercise, or if this exercise is given short shrift, the number of alternatives that you generate will be fewer than optimum. And this will lead to sub-par decisions.
The illustration in the subsequent lesson will help us understand this better.
Me: Use structured Methodologies to help you think and make decisions (fixed methodologies yield far better decisions)
