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DECIDING PRIORITIES

The most dramatic step in decision-making is when the decider/s decide priorities between options.

Options without specific priorities are merely speculations. Proposed solutions without option priorities tends to be hunches or a dogmas. A decision without priorities is merely a good intention, or a recipe for missed deadlines, uncoordinated action or overwork. Unless priorities can be specified between options, deciders find themselves unable to make any, but an arbitrary random decision on the issue with all options of potentially equal importance.

Questions to focus the decider's attention on priorities:

What options are important? How important?
What are my priorities? What should they be?
What is my valuation, estimation or preference among the options?
What is the best practical solution to the problem?
What could happen? What should happen?

The priority of an option is the degree of its importance relative to others on the agenda. Relative importance is the intensity, value or strength of preference which one option warrants as compared with others in terms of relevant objective. To resolve an issue is to compare options and decide priorities between them. This is the discretionary part of the decider’s work. Priorities provide a systematic resolution of the issue. Depending on the issue, the priority of an option is how far it is:

important	achievable	meets objective
valued	desirable	meets objectives
preferred	feasible	meets demands
warranted	beneficial	makes an impact
influential	essential	achieves results

Priorities are assigned by weighting options, not merely ranking them. They express by how much one option is relatively more important than another, not merely whether it is. They express valuation, not merely precedence. The priority weightings constitute a priority scale.

DECISION METHODS

To make a decision is to make a judgement. Judgement is the comparison, evaluation and weighting of options. Comparison and weighting are natural human processes, implicit in most reasonable decisions about anything.

Intuition method: The simplest quickest decision exercise is the direct intuitive method. Deciders simply assign percentage points between 0 and 100 to each option to represent its relative priority or weighting.

Judgement method: This is the most reliable and valid method, with built-in reliability checks. The decider/s successively compares one option with another pair-by-pair, judging their relative importance in specific priority weights or points (not merely rank order). The priority weights reflect his/her views, values and preferences for each option.

Focal questions are first:
How do any two options compare?
Which do we judge more important of any two options?

Then:

How much more priority does the more important option warrant, as compared with the other, in terms of the 1 - 9 judgement scale below?

JUDGEMENT SCALE

Generally deciders try to avoid using the extreme points of the scale. They rarely use the absolute scale point 9 since there are few things they are as absolutely sure of as they're sure the earth is round. They rarely use the equality scale point 1 since there is usually a just noticeable difference in priority between options.

EXAMPLE :

Which service departments should expand?
All things considered, which option warrants more priority - Service Department A or Service Department B?
How much more priority does the more important Service Department warrant than the other in terms of the 1 – 9 scale?

Overview Part 3 of 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7