What influences your decision-making process? When you decided to start a company, you thought it would be easy to make decisions. As the boss, you get to decide on all the outcomes, right? While you do get the final say, it doesn’t mean you always get your own way. In an ideal world, you could look at a decision and make a call just like that.
However, many obstacles stand in your way and influence decisions. This can often mean that you don’t follow the path you hoped to go down. For example, you wanted to sell a product for a certain price, but other factors dictated that you needed to list it for a lower price.
What are the biggest factors influencing your decisions? No matter the business, we can usually break it down to the following:
Money
Money talks, and it is often the biggest factor of them all. Most of your decisions are influenced by money in one way or another. It could be your budget constraints forcing you into a more reserved decision, or your aim for profits encouraging a certain path. Take two identical businesses offering the same products, but one of them needs a lot of financial help. In this scenario, you’d see two completely different sets of decisions made by each business. The financially unstable one would do things dramatically differently from the financially stable enterprise.
Ethics
There has long been a battle between doing what you think is right for your business and doing what’s ethically correct. You can read a really good article by Jozef Opdeweegh that explains the moral battle in decision-making for business owners. In essence, your business might want to do something, but it could be morally and ethically wrong. For example, an alcohol company knows it needs to promote its drinks to get people to buy them. However, it’s not very ethical to market alcohol as a desirable thing considering the damage it does to the human body. You get the idea, ethics will play a huge role in influencing your business decisions.
Customers
Last but not least, your customers influence almost every decision you make. There might be some minor behind-the-scenes decisions that don’t take them into account, but the majority of decisions focus on the customers. Why? Because they are the people you’re aiming to please. You need to make calculated decisions that appeal to your customers as this is how you make money. It would be unwise to do something without thinking about how your customers react. You should never intentionally do something to upset your customers! A great example is the raising of prices. It may make sense financially as you can make more money, there are no ethical concerns, but how will the customers react? Ultimately, it’s their reaction that dictates if you raise your prices and how much you raise them by.
These aren’t the only things that will affect your decision-making process. However, they are the most significant. As a general rule, think about all three of these things whenever you have to make a decision. It should help you come to the best conclusion possible.
