Decisions

Process and States

Imagine your decision as a caterpillar, transforming through four distinct stages before emerging as a beautiful butterfly. With PrioMind, decisions evolve through this process of four states:

1. drafting: The egg stage. Team members lay the groundwork by detailing the description, decision-makers, strategy and its options.
2. assessing: The larva stage. Team members and advisors collectively munch on each option, digesting it with ratings. They then tackle the most diverging positions – the tough leaves, if you will.
3. deciding: The pupa stage. Decision makers cocoon themselves with the assessment results, emerging with their final choice.
4. finalized: The butterfly stage. Decision makers spread their wings and communicate the result to the world.

To guide your decision through its metamorphosis, use the process player. It's your chrysalis controller!

The states drafting, assessing, and deciding can be incomplete or complete, determining when a decision is ready to move to the next status. As a result, every decision finds itself at a step from 0/6 (drafting incomplete) to 6/6 (finalized).

Status Overlays

In addition, decisions can have the following status overlays:

• paused (see paused decisions)
• archived (see finalized or archived decisions)

These overlays can be used at any time throughout the entire process, independent of a decision's status.

Status overlays are cumulative, so a decision can potentially be paused and archived at the same time.

Open Decisions

Decisions are considered "open" as long as they aren't in status finalized (see states) or haven't been archived (see status overlays and finalized or archived decisions).

Paused Decisions

Decisions with the status overlay paused are considered on hold. This status overlay indicates to your team and advisors to temporarily discontinue their work (like rating options).

Recently Made Decisions

Recently made decisions are those that have been set to status finalized during the last 90 days (and currently still are) and that haven't been archived yet.

Finalized or Archived Decisions

Decisions with the status overlay archived or that have been set to status finalized longer than 90 days ago (and currently still are) are listed in the decision archive.

To archive decisions, check the box "Archived" under "General" in the decision settings.

To unarchive decisions:

• Uncheck the decision's "Archived" box under "General" in the decision settings, and/or
• Rewind the decision to a status prior to finalized.

Status Changes

Putting a decision through the decision-making process will change a decision's status and status overlays every now and then.

To notify everyone working on the decision and to keep track of those changes, PrioMind logs them as events.

Users triggering a status change are given the opportunity to explain the reason for the status change to the rest of the team and for the records.

The event history is shown at the bottom of each decision page. It also includes an entry of the creation of the decision.

Description

Use a decision's description to provide context to everyone working on the decision. Here are a few guidelines on how to write a good description:

• Start With Why: Tell people why they should care about the decision and invest time in the decision-making process. Why is it important, in general and particularly now? What's at stake and what's the cost of indecision?
• Short and Sweet: Keep the description concise and useful as overview. If you want to provide more details, use links to your team's file sharing platform (like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and alike). PrioMind is designed to complement such platforms and ill-equipped to host larger documents itself.

AUTO-SAVING ENABLED

Descriptions are auto-saved after typing stops for 1 second.

MARKDOWN SUPPORT

Descriptions support Markdown formatting. The rendered result can be previewed by flipping on the preview switch next to the Markdown icon.

Decision Makers

One of the most important, yet early-on overlooked questions in every decision is:

Who takes the final decision?

RELEVANCE FOR PERSONAL DECISIONS

While less obvious than in a team setting, the question of "Decision Makers" might also be relevant for personal decisions. Is it really just your decision? Maybe someone else has a say in the matter, too.

It's important to get the right answer early and to manage expectations of people collaborating on the decision proactively. Otherwise, it might be fair to assume that everyone contributing will get an equal vote, potentially leading to frustration.

To avoid that, explicitly state the decision maker/s.

Take your time to find the right answer to this question. Sometimes, it's tricky to get this right. The following thoughts might help as general guidelines:

• Appoint decision-making power to roles, not persons. This avoids inadvertent transfer of power when people switch roles.
• The decision is made by the role/s accountable for it – those roles who are equipped to take, and must take, the blame when it turns out to be the wrong decision.

AUTO-SAVING ENABLED

The field "Decision Makers" is auto-saved after typing stops for 1 second.

MARKDOWN SUPPORT

The field "Decision Makers" supports Markdown formatting. The rendered result can be previewed by flipping on the preview switch next to the Markdown icon.

Strategy

Decisions rarely stand alone. They're rather links in larger chains of decisions aimed at achieving one or more overall objectives.

Whether you decide to buy real estate or to launch a project: Each time, the decision serves a bigger purpose. You might call it "impact," "mission," "vision," etc. We call this bigger purpose simply "strategy." In any case, this element helps tying decisions together into a coherent whole and provides an important cornerstone in making decisions.

If you happen to lack a formal strategy or the like, now might be the right time to formalize it and put it into words. Without such a basis for alignment, making decisions as a group will most certainly backfire.

TIP

Of course, choosing the right strategy is – you guessed it – a decision again. And of course, PrioMind can perfectly help with that, too. In this case, use the strategy field to describe the higher level purpose of the strategy (i.e., your mission, vision or values).

Just as with the description, keep it short and sweet. The strategy field is part of a decision's overview and as such has a summarizing function. If you want to provide more details, use links to your team's file sharing platform (like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and alike). PrioMind is designed to complement such platforms and ill-equipped to host larger documents itself.

AUTO-SAVING ENABLED

Strategies are auto-saved after typing stops for 1 second.

MARKDOWN SUPPORT

Strategies support Markdown formatting. The rendered result can be previewed by flipping on the preview switch next to the Markdown icon.

Option-Less Decisions

Sometimes, the universe has a funny way of deciding for us. Picture this:

You're tasked with hiring a new CEO for your organization. You've set up a decision on PrioMind, invited the group of owners, and identified three stellar candidates. But then, plot twist! Two candidates withdraw, leaving you with a single (still fantastic) option.

It's like showing up to a buffet, only to find out there's just one dish left. Sure, it might be a Michelin-star worthy meal, but can you really call it a "choice" anymore?

In these cases of cosmic intervention, PrioMind lets you fast-forward through the decision-making process. If you find yourself option-less while in status drafting, you can zip right to deciding.

Why bother? Because even when the choice is made for you, there's still value in documenting the journey. After all, you can still learn from decisions that the universe has taken for you!

Result

The field "result" serves to document and communicate the outcome of your decision to everyone who collaborated on PrioMind. It's the place where you can list the winning option/s, if applicable.

WHAT CAN RESULTS BE?

Typically, the result of a decision is a single option or a shortlist of options that received high scores. However, there can be other very legitimate cases, too. For example:

• Decision-makers come to no decision at all or rather decided not to decide. Maybe, the decision completely ran out of options, or the context changed and the decision lost its importance?
• Decision-makers make a compromise between options, resulting in a mix or combination of parts of two or more options.
• Decision-makers choose options that scored low. Sometimes, people in the accountable roles cannot decide on the highest scoring options for good reason. Does it defy the purpose of collective decision-making? No, absolutely not: The collective process made the low score and its risks apparent, putting decision-makers in a better position to address these risks and take accountability.

Regardless of the type of result, remember: Someone will have to execute the decision, and this is your chance to give them the best start possible.

LEARNING FROM PAST DECISIONS

Documenting the result of a decision is the first step in learning from it in the future. PrioMind's "Let Me Learn and Improve" features are yet on the roadmap – however, you can already support your future self today by taking the time to properly document your final decisions now.

Just as a decision's description or strategy, keep the a decision's result useful as overview. If you want to provide more details, use links to your team's file sharing platform (like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and alike). PrioMind is designed to complement such platforms and ill-equipped to host larger documents itself.

AUTO-SAVING ENABLED

Results are auto-saved after typing stops for 1 second.

MARKDOWN SUPPORT

Results support Markdown formatting. The rendered result can be previewed by flipping on the preview switch next to the Markdown icon.