 Today we'll dive into six easy systems that will help you with better decision making. These systems won't only help you make better decisions but they will help you make them at the right time and be more confident about them even if the impact of these decisions is huge. Now I get that making decisions can be really hard especially at Birk. We are social animals and we want to be liked and we want to be part of a group so we often search for consensus and from input from others. The systems we're going to talk about are going to make you more confident when making decisions and thus make them more easy to make. First system we're going to talk about is the QB system. It was developed at Voice which is a completely self-managed organization employing 150 people. Because they are fully self-managed they need to be able to make decisions themselves and thus needed an easy framework to do so. This framework has four elements. How certain am I about making the decision? How urgent is this decision? Can I go back on the decision and how big is the impact of the decision I'm about to make? Let's start with urgency and certainty. If you're certain about making a decision urgent or not so urgent just make the call. A good example of this is I'm often asked to join a board but I'm very bad at that. I'm bad at reading financial statements, I'm bad at meetings so I'm not the right guy for the job so I can say with certainty that it's going to be a no. If a decision is low on certainty and urgency just park it. There's no reason to worry about it now. If a decision is low on certainty and urgency just let it go. Let your future self worry about it. I'm often asked how I'm going to spend my summer holiday and I don't know yet. We've got a great camper van, we need nice weather so we're going to decide on the location at the last minute. My future self can worry about it. If certainty is low and urgency is high we need to move on to the other two parts of the framework. If the impact is small and I can go back on a decision I just make the call. If it's not the right decision time will tell. We need to take the leap and see how reality reacts on our decision. If the impact is small and you can't go back a lot of people ask for permission but it's way better to ask for objections. A good example of this is the voice spending policy. Anybody in the organization can spend up to 5000 euros by just announcing it in a channel. By announcing it you create both clarity and the opportunity for people to object to the spending. Now let's look at decisions that have a big impact but where you can go back on. The best way to tackle these is to run small experiments. A good example of this is your company pricing strategy. You can't change the pricing strategy for your entire customer group overnight but you can run small experiments with new customer groups and new pricing strategies. The final decisions are huge decisions where you can't go back on. The only way you can tackle this is to raise certainty. A good example of this is switching jobs. It's very difficult to get a feel for a new organization by reading up on them online or doing a job interview. So if you want to switch job it's a huge decision it's very difficult to go back to your old job. What you can do is ask for a day where you can work in the new organization to get a feel for the organization so you get more certainty about the switch you're about to make. Now let's look at five other systems which are a lot easier and can support the system we just talked about. The second decision system is very simple. It's either a hell yeah or it's a no. It's a very simple one but it helps you out in a lot of situations. For example look at your inbox. A lot of them are questions from other people and you can see for yourself if it's either yeah I love to do this or it's a meh and if it's a meh it's a no. Now there's one important ground rule here. If you wouldn't do it tomorrow you won't do it in two months either so if you're asked to speak at a certain event and you think I don't really like it but in two months don't say yeah. If you don't like to do it tomorrow you won't like to do it in two months either. Thanks Derek Sivers for this nice mental model. The third system is an iteration on the system. It's a default yes and a default no. The default yes applies to my inner circle. If my kids ask me to help them out with their homework my default answer is going to be yes. My brother asking me to babysit their kid my default answer is yes. My friends asking me to go on a weird adventure we're gonna do it and if my colleagues ask me for their help the default answer is going to be yes. The default no applies to anybody outside my inner circle. Saying no to them by default protects my time and creates space and time for the important people in my life. System number four is the whole body yes and this is a really important one. First off I can reason with my mind is this a good decision on an intellectual level. The second thing I can listen to my heart is this the right thing to do and finally I can listen to my gut. What does my gut tell me? When you have a whole body yes the mind the heart and the gut say yes. Now let's look at the difficult decisions you know you need to make but are just really hard. For decisions like these the system is very simple don't chew on poo don't postpone it don't delay it decisions like these don't get better over time and the consequences often do. I know it's hard I really do but get over it don't chew swallow. Finally system number six and this one is for the most difficult decisions in life. Starting something is really easy but knowing when you need to stop is a very difficult thing to do. Luckily Stephen Barlett created a very simple flowchart for these situations. If you're thinking about quitting it's very good to ask the question why? If it's hard look at the potential reward is it worth it then continue if it's not just quit. If something sucks the question is can you make it not suck? If the answer is no quit and if the answer is yes I can just try to make it not suck. If you feel you can make it not suck it's good to still ask the question whether or not that's worth it and if it's not worth it or you can't make it not suck it's okay to quit. If you want to learn more about these six systems please follow the link in the video description. We've written extensively about them including all graphics for all these models. I hope these six models really help you out. Thanks for watching and thanks for voice for supporting these videos and I would love to see you in the next one. Cheers!