When questions arise and you need to start making decisions, how does one start? What is the framework one might use to frame the discussion. You need something to start with, some way to start to try to piece together what a single decision might mean.
How you frame decisions is a good way to judge what is important in your company or just important to you. Is price the determining factor at all times? Well, that says something about what you value (good or bad). Do you look for what everyone else is using? The newest? The fastest? Best value? Least cost-of-ownership? Most readily available? Allows you the most control? Allows you the least control?
There are thousands if not millions of other questions you can use to frame a decision, and each one says something slightly different about you, your company, and what you value. Good or bad.
Here are some questions I am currently sing to frame decisions at work:
- Is this something we need to do?
- Is this something we should be doing?
- Should this be do-able on a mobile platform?
- Do we need to have a mobile solution for this?
- Are we legally able to do this?
- How much extra effort will this take?
- Do we have the expertise to do this well?
- Do we have the resources in place to do this well?
- Why are we going to do this?
- Where is the money coming from?
- Who is pushing for this?
- Why are they pushing for this?
That is just a sampling, but they are usually floating up in my noggin just waiting for answers. If you look at this, almost every one of them could have the answer of “no”, and that is important because you need to be able to say “no” to things that really need it.
Does every question need a “yes” answer in order for you to do something? Of course not, but every question’s answer needs to be weighed in some manner so that you can make an informed decision when the time comes. Otherwise you are just making arbitrary decisions without really thinking things through.