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A clearly important decision gets delayed multiple times - or not made at all - causing office-wide frustration. It's a situation that will sound all too familiar for many of us.In the past, we used to suffer from too few options to choose from; today, we suffer from too many. Abundance of choices has replaced scarcity. On top of this, the quantity of data and information at our disposal has grown exponentially thanks to resources like the internet, making it that much harder to decide between multiple choices. An overload of options can be demotivating. In fact, a study in 2000 by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper found that people are more likely to purchase gourmet jams when offered a limited array of choices, rather than an extensive selection of 24.Big organisations often also suffer from a lack of accountability. Sometimes it's far from clear that a decision needs to be taken, let alone by whom. Delays and confusion emerge when no one is in charge.While algorithms and expert systems can help make the right decision, the most important choices are still left to human decision makers. As a result of all this, we are now facing an epidemic of indecision. Given this issue, how can we learn to make and implement effective decisions? Here are five guidelines to help if you're organisation is suffering from the indecision epidemic. Limit your optionsIf faced with too many options, try to eliminate as many as possible. Can you apply knock-out criteria to eliminate most of the choices? Then score the options (for example on a scale from one to 10) on a few dimensions that are important to you.Cut one decision out each dayFor some people, making decisions over the course of the day can lead to "decision fatigue". Try reducing your mental load. Cutting one decision out of the
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