The Most Effective Decision-Making Strategies to Grow Your Business

The Most Effective Decision-Making Strategies to Grow Your Business

One common denominator that most successful business owners share is their ability to envision what success will look like further down the line. From mitigating their risks to planning ahead and going with their gut instinct, certain decision-making strategies remain unchanged across the board.

So, regardless of whether your business has reached a stagnation point or if you’re feeling burned out with all the challenges you’ve had to face, here are a few simple techniques that will help guide your decision-making process going forward:

  1. Secure professional liability coverage

As the business landscape becomes increasingly competitive, more entrepreneurs are turning to professional liability insurance. Commonly known as Errors and Omissions (E&O) Insurance, this specialty coverage safeguards you and your service-based business from claims of malpractice, negligence, or misrepresentation.

In other words, if one of your clients or customers believes that you have caused them financial loss due to incomplete, flawed, or negligent work, you can be sued. And this inadvertently hampers your decision-making process further down the line. However, with professional liability insurance, in the eventuality you are taken to court, your insurance will pay your:

  • Lawyer’s fees
  • Settlement amounts – if your case is settled out of court
  • Judgment amounts – if the judge orders you to pay damages to the aggrieved party
  • Expert witness fees
  • Miscellaneous court administrative costs

Many entrepreneurs who don’t have professional liability coverage base their decisions on fear, which doesn’t do their business any favors. Professional liability insurance makes your decision-making process that much smoother as you don’t have to constantly worry about the myriad of factors that can go awry.

  1. Leverage big data solutions

Small business analytics can be employed to bolster the entire decision-making process, making it much easier and simpler to arrive at smart solutions. Several entrepreneurs who aren’t aware of big data or choose to ignore it, miss out on great business opportunities in the long run.

Contrary to popular belief, big data analytics isn’t just for big corporations. In fact, it is better suited to small endeavors because being more agile, these businesses can act faster and more efficiently based on valuable insights received.

With big data, entrepreneurs are increasingly discovering ways they can enhance their product and service quality, strengthen their marketing efforts, and build stronger relationships with their customers.

  1. Trust your instinct

According to various studies conducted, when entrepreneurs trust their gut, they arrive at better decisions much quicker. Most notably, Richard Branson said that while he does rely on huge amounts of statistics when it comes to making decisions, he also pays heed to his intuition as well.

Apple’s Steve Jobs is another prime example of following his heart when it came to crucial decision-making at the behemoth tech company. For example, Jobs leveraged his intuition when he foresaw tablets being the next big thing after desktops. Going with your gut can undoubtedly enhance your decision-making process, especially when you have multiple decisions to make in a day.

  1. Be aware of the different levels of decision-making

Regardless of the type of industry you’re in, decision-making goes through three stages, depending on how far your business has evolved. They include:

  • Reactive decision-making: When your business is in its infancy phase, you come up with quick solutions to meet the myriad of challenges you face.
  • Proactive decision-making: When your business grows, and the dust settles, you take at least three months to plan your next step. In addition to exercising more caution and comprehending the cash flows better, you also learn how to mitigate risks so that you lower your error rate.
  • Strategic decision-making: When you are confident about where your company is headed in the next few years and the impact your brand will make, you truly realize the fruits of your labor.

Integral to your business advancing its trajectory of success, it’s imperative that you push forward to the proactive decision-making phase as soon as possible, eliminate wasteful processes, outsource, and delegate. It might take you years to reach the strategic thinking phase; but when you do, the sky’s the limit.