Futures: Decision Making and Problem Solving
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DECISION-MAKING and PROBLEM SOLVING
Welcome to Decision-Making and Problem Solving, one of the series of
Futures workbooks, which help students choose and prepare for their
careers. Like the other workbooks in the series you can dip in and out
doing the exercises which are most relevant to you. You might want to
include the exercises or the output in your personal development plan or
e-portfolio.
The aim of this workbook is to introduce you to a number of techniques
and models for making decisions and solving problems. The techniques
and models have a general application in all spheres of life, but the
examples in this workbook are concerned with career-related decisions or
problems.
This workbook can stand alone from the others in the Futures series,
particularly if you have a specific career decision or a problem to solve in
the near future.
However, it also links well with the Futures workbooks Skills, and
Personality and Values. A greater understanding or clarity about your
skills, personality and the work values that are important to you will
undoubtedly impact on the way you make future career decisions. Greater
clarity or understanding of these dimensions in your life can help you to
make more considered decisions about work.
Contents
What sort of decision maker are you?
Page
2
Seven steps in decision making
Page
7
Three techniques for making a decision
Brainstorming
Balance sheet approach
Thinking Hats
Action plan
Page 9
Page 9
Page 11
Page 13
Page 17
If you still find it difficult to make a difficult decision, you can book an
appointment with a Careers Adviser to help you. The Careers Service
contact details are available from www.leedsmet.ac.uk/careers.
Futures: Decision Making and Problem Solving
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SECTION A: WHAT SORT OF DECISION-MAKER ARE YOU?
Jan
Throughout this workbook, the decision facing one graduate, Jan, will be
used to illustrate how the three decision-making models work for one
person.
Jan is in her final year at university and has the offer of a job,
which is a permanent one that pays well, but she is not sure if it is
right for her. There is a post-graduate course that appeals to her
too, and she is also drawn to go and live and work in Greece, but
doesn’t know what she would do out there. She likes the country
and the people and can speak some Greek. Her parents are not
keen on this option; they are encouraging her to take the job. The
post-graduate course will accept her, and it does appeal, but it’s
expensive. She could get a loan if she wanted one.
Decisions are often hard to make. There may be a number of possible
and often conflicting options, and the outcomes of decisions can be
unpredictable. Decisions are also not made in a vacuum; they can affect
other people. And other people can express strong opinions on the options
open to you, even if they are not directly affected by the decision you
make. Career related decisions are particularly important, as an early
choice of career can set you in a particular direction that might be hard to
change or reverse.
DECISION-MAKING RESPONSES
Every day you will make hundreds of decisions: whether to hit the snooze
button again, what to wear, what to have for breakfast. Most are so
minor that you do so based entirely on gut feeling, to use rational decision
making would not be time efficient. The three main methods people use to
make decisions are:
1. Not making a decision: leaving the choice to another party
2. Using their gut feeling or intuition
3. Rationally analysing the pros and cons of each option.
(Phillips, Friedlander, Pazienza and Kost, 1985)
Whilst the first two decision making responses can be effective for small
decisions, typically they are not good for career decisions(Singh and
Greenham, 2003).
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Your Usual Decision Making Style
Listed below are a series of decision you may have had to make over the
last few days, weeks, or months, look at each one in turn and assess
which of the decision-making styles you think you have used that this
decision, and then the one you think is most appropriate in making this
type of decision.
Which decision-making
style did you use?
Which decision-making
style is most appropriate
for this decision?
Whether to go out on
Saturday night
Which modules you
want to take next
year
Whether to buy the
new CD you like
Whether to apply for a
particular job/course
What to wear this
morning
Where to live next
year (or who to live
with)
How much effort to
put into exam
preparation
Whether to apply for a
work experience
placement
Did you notice that you favour a particular decision making style
regardless of the importance of the decision, or do you use a range of
techniques? Write a few words here about what you noticed about your
decision making style
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INNER OR OTHER-RELIANT
In addition, to what extent are you in general an inner-reliant or otherreliant decision maker?
Inner-Reliant Decision Maker:
you generally take responsibility for
your own decisions
Other-Reliant Decision Maker:
you tend to leave decision-making
responsibility to others
(tick which applies to you)
This definitely applies to me
This definitely applies to me
Applies most of the time to me
Applies most of the time to me
Applies some of the time to me
Applies some of the time to me
Applies none of the time to me
Applies none of the time to me
Look again at the styles you stated you have used in the earlier exercise
and rank them in the frequency or significance in past decisions you have
made (or not made!). List the most significant/frequent style as number
1.
1
2
3
4
5
6
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Now you have had opportunity to think about your usual decision-making
style you might want to consider why you use that decision-making style.
There are positives and negatives for each of the decision-making styles.
In this exercise you need to think about different methods for making
decisions and what the pros and cons of each are. The first one is filled in
as an example for you.
Let fate takes its course
Pros
Cons

It requires little energy to make the decision

The best option may not be taken

The decision maker does not have to feel
personally responsible if the outcome wasn’t
successful

The decision maker may dwell on what
‘might have been.’
Agonise but then don’t make a decision
Pros
Cons
Do what everyone else does
Pros
Cons
Do the opposite of what everyone else does
Pros
Cons
Gather the information needed, analyse it as best you could
and then used your instincts to make the final choice.
Pros
Cons
Made the decisions based primarily on what you felt; using
your intuition.
Pros
Cons
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SECTION B: SEVEN STEPS TO DECISION-MAKING
In this section we move on to looking at how good decisions can be made.
Like most models or formulas it doesn’t always work though - as the
‘unexpected’ in life is a factor that no one can predict.
But as a general rule, good decisions can often be made based on a blend
of the following four elements:
INFORMATION
Gathering and analysing
the best information
from reliable sources
SELF-INTEREST
Doing what you feel is
right for you, but...
INTUITION
Tapping into your
instincts about what is
right (this is where an
understanding of your
values is helpful)
REGARD FOR
OTHERS
...at the same time,
having regard for the
opinions of others
But how do you get to this situation?
There are seven steps in the decision-making process.
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SEVEN STEPS IN THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS:
1. Be clear about the decision that needs to be made
2. Gather the information
3. Analyse the information gathered
4. Weigh-up the options
5. Decide which is likely to be the best option
6. Work out an action plan
7. Review and monitor your progress
It looks very logical doesn’t it? And it is ‘logical’, but we can’t always think
rationally when we are in difficult or confusing situations and so steps 4
and 5 are the toughest for most people. Later in this workbook we are
going to look at a number of exercises specifically to help with these two
steps.
How do the steps apply to Jan? See next page.
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STAGES OF JAN’S DECISION
1. Be clear about the decision
that needs to be made.
Jan has reduced the options to three:
a. Take the job that has been offered to
her.
b. Go to Greece, live and find work there
and see what happens.
c. Take up the place on the postgraduate course.
2. Gather the information
(The University Careers Centre is
the obvious starting place for
researching and finding this type
of information)
Jan has already got information about
the job she has been offered and about
the post-graduate course, but it’s the
work possibilities in Greece she doesn’t
know much about.
However, she went to the careers centre
at the university to gather information
on work opportunities in Greece.
3. Analyse the Information
There is a reasonable to good chance
that she could find fairly low-paid work in
one of the tourist areas in a bar or cafe.
There is a chance too, for her to become
a holiday representative for a tour
operator that specialises in Greek
holidays and accommodation would be
provided with this.
There is also the possibility of doing
some teaching of English as a Foreign
Language, but this would mean going on
to do a Teaching English as A Foreign
Language (TEFL) course after graduation
and before she left Britain.
4. Weigh-up the Information
and
5. Decide which is likely to
be her best option
This is the hard bit!
However, Jan could use at least one of
the following techniques to help with this
stage (see next section).
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SECTION C: THREE TECHNIQUES FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS &
MAKING DECISIONS
The three techniques Jan could try for making a decision are these:
1. Brainstorming
2. Balance Sheet Approach
3. ‘Thinking Hats’ Approach
1. BRAINSTORMING
Brainstorming is a simple idea-stimulation technique for exploring the
elements of any complex situation, including difficult decisions. There are
ways to make this technique work better for you:
 Get rid of normal constraints to thinking: loosen up your thinking
 Suspend judgement (don’t criticise your own ideas)
 Produce as many ideas as possible
 Use one idea as a starting point for others
 Wild ideas are good ideas; truths or insights are often found in wild
ideas
 Clarify ideas on the list – by adding words that do just that
GETTING STARTED
Example: What to do after degree/graduation.

Take a large sheet of paper, and write down the choices or decisions to
be made, e.g. (1) take a particular job that has been offered to you
(2) go on to do a non-vocational post graduate course in a subject you
enjoy studying.

Start with one option– and write down the first words that come
into your head in relation to that choice - don't be afraid to do that.

Write down the other option(s) – do the same, write down the first
words that come into your head.

Go back and forth between the options adding to the words as the
ideas occur to you.
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The solutions may not emerge, but the issues and problems will often
become clearer.
Some prompts to seeing the consequences of choices could be:
 Risk (financial or emotional) – the risk attached to a particular
choice, but go off at a tangent from that, saying how you feel about
taking the risk.
 Information – have you got all the information you need? Is it from a
reliable source? Is it up-to-date and free from bias?
 Values – are my personal values having an effect on my thinking in
some way? Is this good, or distorting my perception in some way?
 Instincts - what are your gut-feelings about the choices? Don’t
ignore instincts.
 Other People – what do they think? Does it matter? Do you care?
JAN’S BRAINSTORMING
Job (the pros):




Good money - can take driving lessons / buy a car/ clothes
Had enough of being broke
Go on holiday to Greece, pay off debts – a big factor in its favour
Mum would approve of it; a ‘safe’ job she would say
loadsadosh

one job can lead to another, BUT I might get stuck in a groove
££££

and…it seems BORING and ...it’s not really what I want, but
 it’s better than nothing – but is it?
job
but...
loadsa boring!
Boring versus money – I don’t need to pay off the Student Loan until I get a job, so I could wait and get
one I really like. Why do I think it could be boring? It just looks it, and felt it, and all seemed a bit vague.
What would I be doing from day to day? I didn’t like the person in charge of the office.
Bar work: be OK until the novelty wore off.
A job in Greece: I would
like that, but options a
bit limited?
Tour Rep: yes, not too bad – explore this one.
TEFL: yes, again, like it, but need to do a course
2. BALANCE SHEET APPROACH
first, but best bet in terms of prospects and would
further.
The brainstorming approach can satisfy/please
be good for parents!
shakingDefinitely
up to theexplore
surface
the
real issues and problems hidden in any situation. However, it doesn’t suit
everyone, and another approach is to look at a decision in a balance
Post-grad course:
like This
to study
I enjoyedtaken
it on the
degree,
but more debt
– another
sheetI’d
way.
is athis,
technique
from
the business
world
where£5,000 to
borrow for fees
and
then
I
have
to
live
–
can
take
out
a
loan,
but
it’s
not
leading
to
a
particular
job (does
balance sheets are used to weigh up the assets, advantages and
this matter, I’ll
enjoy it?) But of
theany
cost venture.
is the real problem. Parents would help, but I don’t want to get
disadvantages
saddled with another debt.
2. THE BALANCE SHEET APPROACH
So...job in Britain (in the bag); a job in Greece (nothing yet, but I haven’t really looked properly)
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2. BALANCE-SHEET APPROACH
The brainstorming approach can be good for shaking up to the surface the
real issues and problems hidden in any situation. It can also be used as a
first step before moving onto the balance sheet approach. This is a
technique taken from the business world where balance sheets are used
to weigh up the assets, advantages and disadvantages of any venture.
In this approach Jan must first decide which factors are important to her
(these will be different for everybody) and then decide how relatively
important these factors are against each other. For example, pleasing her
parents may play a part in the decision, but not as large a part as the
cost, so she may rate pleasing her parents out of 5, whilst rating cost out
of 10. Jan’s balance sheet is shown below.
Cost
Stay in Leeds with
friends
Interesting
Time to enjoy my
self
Parents will be
pleased
Impact on my long
term career
Postgraduate
Course
Work in Greece
Job offer in
Britain
2/10
3/5
4/10
3/5
10/10
4/5
4/20
5/10
20/20
10/10
5/20
5/10
4/5
0/5
5/5
10/20
0/20
12/20
When Jan has rated each option against her important factors she than
adds them up for a total score for each option.
Totals
28
37
41
These total scores are an objective means of deciding which option is
best. However it is important that Jan also considers how she feels about
this outcome. Did the option she wanted score highest? What does this
mean to her? She now needs to reflect on the scores to make an
informed choice she is happy with.
It is at this stage that intuition comes into play: you may naturally be an
intuitive decision maker and taking this rational approach may feel
artificial to you. Once you have the scores for each of your options you
should immediately reflect on your initial response to them – did you think
“Oh no, I wanted the gap year to score higher” or “Great, that’s what I
wanted to come out highest.” Reflecting on your response at this stage
will help you establish what the best choice is – you may now be able to
identify a factor you didn’t put into the equation, or recognise that you did
not put enough weighting on one issue. Don’t be afraid to juggle about
with your balance sheet, because as you do so you will be reflecting on
the decision.
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If Jan feels bad about her scores, he may rethink how important one
factor is to him: deciding to rate cost out of twenty instead of ten or
adding in another factor which she hadn’t previously considered. Although
the balance sheet approach is a rational decision making strategy,
intuition should also play a part.
There is space here for you to complete a balance sheet analysis of your
decision.
So firstly think about the criteria that are important to you and write them
down in the left hand column. Then decide what you want to rate each
one out of before completing each column. Finally add up the scores.
Criteria
Option 1:
Option 2:
Total Score
There is still one other technique that Jan can use to test her motivations:
the ‘Thinking Hats’ approach – see next page.
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THINKING HATS
‘Thinking Hats' is a third technique you can use to look
at options or choices from a number of perspectives. This
can encourage you to move outside your habitual thinking
style, and helps you to get a more rounded view of a
situation.
Many successful people think from a very rational, positive
viewpoint. This is part of the reason that they are successful. Often,
though, they may fail to look at a problem from an emotional, intuitive,
creative or negative viewpoint. This can mean that they underestimate
resistance to plans, fail to make creative leaps and do not make essential
contingency plans.
Pessimists may be excessively defensive about decisions and, conversely,
people who rely on their intuition may sometimes fail to look calmly and
rationally at decisions to be taken.
The ‘Thinking Hats' technique therefore can help you make a more
considered decision by helping to move you out of habitual modes of
response to problem solving.
(adapted from De Bono, E. (1999) Six Thinking Hats, Back Bay Books)
HOW TO USE THE TECHNIQUE:
You can use ‘Thinking Hats’ in groups or on your own. Imagine yourself
wearing different coloured hats when considering a particular problem or
decision. Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different style of thinking about the
problem or decision from a range of perspectives.
These are explained below:
WHITE HAT
With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the
information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps
in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.
RED HAT
'Wearing' the red hat, you look at problems using your intuition; what
feels right or wrong to you. Also try to think how other people will react
emotionally to the same situation; how will they feel? The red hat is about
your feelings and other people’s emotional responses to the situation you
are in.
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YELLOW HAT
The Yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic
viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of a final decision and the
value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything
looks gloomy and difficult.
BLACK HAT
Using black hat thinking, look at all the negatives that might flow from a
particular decision. Look at the options cautiously and defensively. Try to
see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the
weak points in a plan.
It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans
to counter them. Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans 'tougher'
and more resilient. It can also help you to identify flaws and risks before
you embark on a course of action.
Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique - many
successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot
see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties.
GREEN HAT
The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop
creative solutions to a problem. It is a liberated way of thinking, in which
there is little criticism of ideas. You let your imagination roam and think
wacky!
Key points:
‘Thinking Hats’ is a good technique for looking at the effects of
a decision from a number of different points of view.
It allows necessary emotion and scepticism to be brought into what
would otherwise be purely rational decisions. It opens up the opportunity
for creativity within decision-making. The technique also helps, for
example, persistently pessimistic people to be positive and creative.
Plans developed using the 'Thinking Hats' technique will be sounder and
more resilient than would otherwise be the case. It may also help you to
spot good reasons not to follow a course of action before you have
committed to it.
Try it yourself with a decision you are facing, or may have to make in the
future.
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Think about the decision/choice and summarise a way of looking at the
issues involved according to the hat you are wearing:
Your Responses:
White Hat
(focus on the information
available)
Red Hat
(your gut feeling or
intuition about the
options open to you)
Yellow Hat
(all the positives that could
flow from the decision)
Black Hat
(all the negatives that
could flow from the
decision)
Green Hat
(any creative/wacky ways
forward?)
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JAN’s THINKING HATS
WHITE
The information on work possibilities in Greece that Jan
obtained from the university careers centre stresses the
need to develop language skills. It also emphasises the fact
that there is unemployment in Greece, which will make it
difficult for someone with limited Greek language skills to
secure work, other than temporary, practical and low paid
work in tourist areas. There is a chance that Jan could find
work as a travel rep, or she could train to be a teacher of
English and work in a Greek language school. This is the
option that most interests her. So she is looking at
intensive TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language)
courses and at the cost of these.
RED
Her intuition tells her not to take the job in Britain just yet;
it doesn’t feel right and she would only regret it if she did.
Her instincts tell her to go to Greece while she is young
enough and free enough to enjoy it. It doesn’t have to be
for a long period, but it is something she needs to get out
of her system.
YELLOW
Jan has a long list of the positive things she hopes she
would get from going to Greece to work for a while in her
life. Most of all she would enjoy living in a country she has
grown very fond of.
BLACK
The problematic aspects of this decision would be with her
parents and their negative reactions; they want her to take
the job. Also, if she spends a lot of money on the TEFL
course and it doesn’t lead to work in Greece, she would be
back to square one. She wonders too, about the reality of
living in Greece, not as a tourist, but as a resident. Would
she see the country in the same way: would it lose its gloss
on closer acquaintance? And what about the longer term?
If she came back to Britain, what could she do for work?
GREEN
Jan thinks about how she could turn her work experience
to her advantage if she returned to Britain. She has an idea
about organising history and culture holiday trips to
Greece, where she could turn her teaching experience to
good advantage.
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SECTION D: ACTION PLAN
The final stages of the ‘seven steps’ involve action planning and, later,
reviewing the decision and action taken. Jan now has to make a final
decision and then implement a plan of action to reach her goal.
To work toward goals that you have identified you can produce an action
plan. You can use the spaces below to work out a plan to get you to
where you want to be.
My goal is....
The action steps I need to take to achieve my goal are as follows, and in
the order shown:
1
2
3
4
5
6
Time Schedule
Your Skills
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It is important to have a specific time schedule to work toward, otherwise
things can drift and not get done. At the end of your time schedule you
can look back to review progress, then look forward to see what remains
to be done to reach your goal. So try completing the following sentences:
Tomorrow I will
Over the next week I will
Over the next month I will
Over the next three months I will
Over the next six months I will
My review date for this process will be:
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Other Topics in the Series
There are several topics in the Series of Futures workbooks looking at
self-assessment, job selection methods and effective communication with
employers. They are available to download from
www.leedsmet.ac.uk/careers/siteindex
Assessing
Your
Skills
Other
Your Personality
and values
Selection
Methods
Graduate
Interviews
Skills
Decision Making
and Problem
Solving
CV’s and Letters
to Employers
Job
Search
Work Experience
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