This website is a large reference manual to describe a spiralling series of decision process steps--and accompanying concepts.

Examples:

• Create a vision for your office
• Make sense out of complex situations
• Make decisions in your own life

Overall View

Abstract

Explaining a rational decision process to participants and decisionmakers--and sticking to it--:

• Gets needed consent to solve the problem and continue meeting needs.
• Considers significant issues in a consistent, fair way
• Promotes a balanced decision
• Works through change, politics, or priority

and prevents:

• Premature decisions
• Missed participants
• Conflicts
• Overlooked influencing factors
• Fatal flaws
• Resentment over the time needed for a solution

This guidebook provides a series of decision process steps, tools to use along the way, and important concepts to keep in mind. You will have to tailor your decision process and approach to your situation. These concepts provide a framework for other management tools and decisionmaking models. Select and use what you need.

This web version uses a hypertext approach so users can find what they need quickly and easily. We also provide a hard copy guide, which lays out the process in a more linear fashion. We suggest using the hard copy as a:

• Workbook to plan your process
• Personal reference guide
• Marked up reference guide to share with your team and participants

To emphasize the overall context and interrelationships in the decision process, the web version differs in form and content from the hard copy. The web guide works in conjunction with the toolbox, a list of decisionmaking tools. We suggest using the web guide to:

• Share specific concepts and steps with the team and participants
• Explore the process and discover connections
• Get quick answers to questions at particular steps
• Uncover an overall view of how the decision process works

The decision process is iterative: You will keep coming back to the same concepts again and again. Please revisit these spaces to see the information in a new context. Steps mesh into one another--thus material in each step links to other steps. Read ahead to understand how one action builds on the next, but don't jump ahead when you actually apply it.

Go On