We make decisions every day, and you’ll have to make decisions during your DEIA journey.

• Is the organization ready to move forward with implementing a cultural shift and embracing DEI?
• How will you engage people within the organization?
• How do you evaluate the leaders of the organization to drive DEIA?
• How do you uncover the inequities within the organization?
• What type of branding and marketing shifts does leadership need to take to ensure external stakeholders understand the organization’s commitment to DEIA?
• There are an unending number of questions to be discussed and decisions to be made!

During the Decision making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. When it is time to make any decisions, it’s important to utilize a decision-making framework. Decision-making tools will help you approach problem-solving effectively. Let’s first talk about a standard, and effective process:

Step 1: Identify the “thing” that needs a decision

• Try to clearly define the decision that needs to be made. And when there are multiple decisions, unless they have dependencies on each other, make the decisions separately.

Step 2: Gather relevant information

• Collect all of the information that is needed from both internal and external areas. You may find sources online, thru people in the office, from people in the community, from best practices in your industry and other sources.

Step 3: Conduct a root cause analysis

• Many times we make decisions based on “symptoms” of a problem or issue, and not on the root cause. Conducting a root cause analysis will help you make decisions that will permanently solve your issue.

Step 4: Weigh the evidence

• Evaluate if the need identified in Step 1 is actually the root cause. Then you can begin gathering more evidence, brainstorming on the validity of each and how it would positively impact the outcome, and come up with the best solutions. We like to use the top 2 alternatives.

Step 5: Choose among alternatives

• Now you can begin to conduct a pros and cons analysis of your top choices in Step 5. At this point, you may reach a decision. Keep in mind, the need to be flexible. Your decision might incorporate a compromise of both alternatives.

Decision Making Tools

Decision Making tools (some come in software form) help you to map out all the possible alternatives to your decision, as well as chances of success or failure. These tools provide a useful way to make the right choice by simplifying the decision-making process. Below are a few decision-making tools, with links to external resources, we have identified that are good for you to consider: