Hicham Maged

Decision Making is one of the basic and common processes which we pass through in our life, almost on daily biases.

Well, I can’t say or pretend that I’m an expert in such process -from the scientific point of view- however I want to share my thoughts with you as a normal person who’s called to take many decisions in his life as we almost are called for.

Simply and away from any formal/scientific definition, I defined it as the act of choosing between two or more alternatives for a specific situation within definite period; either on the individual scale, the community scale or global scale. However the idea lies behind how to make such a choice, i.e. to take a decision.

From my point of view, such process depends on the following factors:

• Cognition: how person perceives this situation from all perspectives;
• Information: availability of information dealing with this situation on different levels;
• Revenue: pros & cons from making such choice on the person himself;
• Impact: pros & cons from making such choice on the community around, and
• Timing: the period allowed for making such choice.

Those factors integrate with each other to make someone take a decision. I’ll give you a very common example to tell about how they work: Assume that you’re going to hang out with your friends to have meal in any place. If you didn’t take the right decision within a specific time for what you want to eat from the menu, then one of the following cases can happen:

1. You’ll make your friends gone mad with you,
2. The waiter will might loose his/her mind if you return back to the same place,
3. You may eat something you don’t want, just to please your friends.

In the three cases, you are the looser. However the 3rd case you are mostly the only looser. On the other hand, if your choice was right, you + the people around will feel happy, and no one will be the looser, except the one who’ll pay the bill at last [*lol*]

Anyway every person lives within different circles of relationships with others, which varies in the radiuses, and however and he/she is the centre of this circle. Circle 1 -for example- is with your family with radius a, Circle 2 is with your friends with radius b, Circle 3 is with your colleagues (school/college/work..etc) with radius c, and so on.

Action Plan
There’s nothing 100% free of errors or free of risk, because we are humans. However the idea lies behind how you perceive the situation. For that matter, I think that everyone who’s willing to take any kind of decision in any situation must take the following action plan:

1. Study the situation well from all perspectives;
2. Never make a decision when you are angry;
3. Don’t make a decision to please yourself regardless the people in different circles of relationship;
4. Don’t make a decision to please people in different circles of relationship only;
5. Be honest with yourself, people and the creator when you make your decisions;
6. Don’t make a decision without listing to the people around you, whom you trust, in case you need other opinions;
7. Don’t make a decision without listing to the both sides, in case you’re in charge of judgment in anything. As you listen to person x, you must listen to person y before you judge;
8. Don’t make a decision based on your personal emotions, I because you love someone or hate someone; or because of his race/religion/.. etc; rather try to be rational in your decision, and
9. Never make a decision that contradict with the direct orders of ALLAH (swt) -GOD- just to please people around you or please yourself. This life will end on day, and we will be judged by the creator, ALLAH (swt) for every penny we spent in life; money, time, effort, or knowledge which you didn’t use for welfare of Mankind.

Kindly note that the last point -number 9- is widely abused from people worldwide who are talking and hiding behind the name of GOD, whatever their religion is. They focus about special acts and say that they are the only right sect while the others are wrong and must be killed. This is the basic law and order terrorists and racists follow, whatever their religion is.

Anyway, I’m here talking about the individuals not the groups, simply because for groups there are other ways, like brain storming or Intelligent Decision Support Systems (IDSS) because the factors became complicated when dealing with organizations.

Well, I think that when we study the situation well, we can decrease the risk of taking a wrong decision, either for ourselves or for the others.

Finally, as I always believe: We are neither Angles nor Devils; rather we are just humans who are subjected to do right and wrong. As Muslims, we believe in destiny; however this doesn’t mean not to take actions to improve your life. That’s totally wrong in Islam, and even if you are non-Muslim the same apply. Destiny is only in things that we can’t change - as humans - like born, death, your figure, however everything else is possible for our personal achievement.

_{[*] Extracted from my personal blog}