Decision Making Strategies

Making decision can be more tasking than we expect. There are many strategies used in choosing the best choice or alternative. The most commonly used strategies include:

Optimizing

This is the strategy of choosing the best option among the identified alternatives. The effectiveness of this strategy relies on importance of the problem, time limit, availability of resources, cost of other alternatives and the psychology of the decision maker. Often, there is a better decision than the decision made. It is better to place limitations to alternatives as it might not be possible to sample all alternatives for a case with large sample space.

Satisficing

This strategy considers the first satisfactory alternative rather than the best. The word satisficing was derived from two words Satisfy and sufficient. Once, these two conditions are in place, and then it is considered as the best option. This is mostly used in many small and quick decisions like where to park, what to where and what to eat.

Maximax

This is maximising the maximums. In this strategy, evaluation is done and the alternative with the maximum profit is chosen as the best option. This is usually referred to as decision of the optimist, as favourable outcome is expected and high potentials are the area of concern. This is usually used when risk is most acceptable and failure can be tolerated.

Maximin

Also known as the maximise the minimum. This strategy is considered to be that of a pessimist as it considers the worst possible outcome of all alternatives and the one with the highest minimum is chosen. This type of strategy is used when failure is expensive and can’t be tolerated.