Good decision-making is one of the most important skills in life and business. Every day is a constant cycle of decisions, yet we don’t spend much time actively improving our decision-making skills.

The spectrum of decision-making ranges from ‘trusting my gut’ to ‘over analyzing.’ For some, the spectrum ranges from ‘winging it’ to ‘avoidance.’ Good decision-making is a balance of intuition and reasoning; the skill comes in knowing how and when to balance the two.

There’s another layer that can be added to the decision-making process that I’ve found to be valuable: filtering decisions through our core values.

Core values are often written out during the required ‘mission, vision and values’ phase of starting our business and then promptly forgotten. They seem great in that discovery process and then we get focused on doing the actual work and leave them behind.

Our decisions should be filtered through our core values.

That’s not to say that they’re the magic eight ball that gives us a clear direction every time, but we’re missing the point of creating core values in the first place if we don’t use them in our decision-making process. 

We can make the process easier if the first step in making a decision is asking ‘How does this align with my values?’