All of us involved in the process of decision making, individually or as part of a team. The decision can be related to work, family or even personal stuff and it can be very simple (e.g. what should I eat today?) or very complex (Who should I marry?)
But one of the main challenges that most people experience is that how they can quickly make the right decision or at least the best possible decision.
Most of us take a position on a subject and then we use our thinking skill solely to support that position. The more we are able to support the position, the less we see any need actually to explore the subject. Therefore, we become trapped in one point of view.
So, the question is how we can make a quick and effective decision in our lives or businesses.
There are many tools and techniques for making decisions, but in this post, I want to talk about one of them which is simple and all people can use it individually or as a group (e.g. family, friends or colleagues).
This tool is called “PMI“.
PMI which stands for ‘Plus/Minus/Interesting’ is a brainstorming, decision making, and critical thinking tool.
It is used to encourage the examination of ideas, concepts, and experiences from more than one perspective.
The only thing that you need to use this tool is a piece of paper. I would like to say A4 size paper or a whiteboard when you want to use this tool in a group decision making at your office or home.
PMI was developed by Dr. Edward de Bono. He is a critical thinking expert from Malta and his models are used worldwide.
The main benefit of the PMI technique is to quickly make a decision by analyzing and weighing the pros and cons.
You can use a piece of paper or whiteboard to write down the plus, minus and interesting points related to a situation that you want to make a decision about.
To use this technique, first, you need to make a table of three columns with the “Plus“, “Minus” and “Interesting” title.
Then, you can start writing all the positive points that you can think of in the first column (Plus/P/+).
After that, you can enumerate all of the negative things you can think of in the second column (Minus/M/-).
Then, in the third column (Interesting/I/#), you can write the points of interest that you should direct your attention to. You can look at them as bonuses.
And in the end, you make your decision because you’ve provided three important aspects of the table. You can now choose more effectively because you’ve scanned and organized three important pieces of information.
We can use the PMI technique for simple and complex situations. This technique is really useful as it forces us to think and write down all the pros, cons and implications of a decision.
For example, you want to move from a big city A and live in a small city B. In this situation the plus, minus, and interesting points can be:
Plus (+):
- Less traffic
- Better weather
- Lower costs
- Rent/buy a better house
Minus (-):
- Fewer business opportunities (depends on your job)
- Few entertainment events
- Most stores are closed after 5 PM
Interesting (#):
- Find new friends
In case that you have the same amount of items in each column (especially + and -) or it is difficult to make the final decision, then after identifying items in the table, you can add a numerical weight of importance between 1 to 5 to each item in the Plus and Minus columns.
Then we need to calculate the total number related to each column and subtract the total number related to the Plus column from the total number of the Minus column.
If the result is positive then it is good to do that decision otherwise, we should think more and probably avoid doing that work. As you can see in the table below, the result is 15-13 = 2.
I do not want to say that this is the best tool, but this tool can be used easily and quickly by many people in many situations.
One of the advantages of using this tool is that it makes people feel good as they involve in the process of decision making. In other words, they have a chance to share their positive and negative opinions without arguing with each other.
Also, you can keep the paper or take a photo from the whiteboard at the end of the session and it helps you to remember why you made that decision.
As I mentioned, you can also use this tool by yourself. I have used it many times when I wanted to register for a course, attend a conference, accept a job offer, buy a new laptop, etc.
I hope you could find this tool useful.