Making Decisions and Closing Review Process Stages

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We’re almost there! By there I mean we’ve almost completed an entire stage of a submission review process together. Of course, this is just one stage of a review process that I created. Decision.io is meant to be flexible, so don’t worry if your review process looks a bit different.

Today, I’ll show you how to move the submissions that will be continuing on in your review process to the next stage, and how to stop submissions that aren’t successful. My next post will show you how to send customized feedback to every applicant, and that will more or less wrap up the major tasks you’ll complete in a typical review process!

If I’m losing you here, it’s probably because you’re just joining us now. Peruse the links below to get up to speed.

Alright, let’s get to it!

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8 Decision-Making Insights from a Nobel Prize Winner

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A picture of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. He is an expert in decision-making.

If you are a decision maker, or aspire to have such a responsibility in your career, this post is for you.

Daniel Kahneman is a winner of a Nobel Prize. He is the author of, Thinking, Fast and Slow, the book where many of these ideas are shared. You can actually read the book for free in PDF here. Much of what dictates today’s decision-making strategies are born out of the ideas of Kahneman himself. If I had to pick one human being in this world to listen to on matters concerning decision-making strategy, Daniel Kahneman is that individual. He has dedicated his life to this and it shows.

So, let’s get into it and supercharge your decision-making abilities!

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Everything You Need To Know To Make Great Decisions

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If you can’t tell yet, we here at Decision.io are firmly against the “gut decision” when the decision is of the complex and critical variety. We’re against it, and we don’t apologize.

These 6 steps of a sound decision-making process will give you everything you need to know about the entire decision-making process. Stop leaving decisions, the cornerstone of success, to chance!

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Easily Import Your Online Submissions Into Decision.io

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In today’s post, I am going to show you how to import your online submissions into Decision.io for review. Today’s example assumes you are importing from .CSV and therefore not using our Wufoo integration.

You will be amazed by how easy it is to go from an intimidating spreadsheet to a user friendly online submission review environment.

If you’re new here, you may want to browse the following links to get caught up in this Decision.io walk through series.

Great! Now let’s get going with today’s tutorial. This is where the fun begins!

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Gut Decisions – Trust or Bust?

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The gut decision divides decision makers everywhere. Some decision makers swear that their gut can do them no wrong and that pouring over data sets and applying decision models is busy work. Others demand a more rigorous approach to decision making and dismiss gut decisions as a viable strategy altogether.

Who’s right?

Well, it depends. Sometimes, making a quick decision based on your gut is the best approach. Other times, you put yourself at risk by failing to collect and analyze relevant data before making a final decision. So, let’s take a closer look at when you should and shouldn’t trust your gut decision. Continue reading →

Online Submission Software System Administration

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An important part of adopting new cloud-based submission management software is ensuring that your current process can be carried over to this new platform. Not only should you be able to carry it over, but it should be quick and easy to do so. We know that if  it’s difficult to even get this new platform up and running it just isn’t worth the hassle of switching.

We get it! We’re living in a time when it’s becoming more common for technology to just plain work. You expect it, and you have every right to expect this much.

In last week’s post, I showed you how to set up a custom review process. This week’s post will take you through the system administration menu. In coming posts I’ll show you how to supercharge your Decision.io experience by enabling powerful integrations with companies like Wufoo, MailChimp, and Constant Contact. Together, these posts will show you just how easy it can be to set up your entire online submission review process.

 

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The Application Management Software Checklist

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Today, we are accepting more applications for grants, business incubator and accelerator programs, and competitions than ever before. This is a great thing of course – it means more money, mentorship, and prizes for all! However, with a change in application volume comes a need to improve the application management process. Even if your particular team isn’t seeing this dramatic increase in applications, it is always worth looking at your process and looking for inefficiencies that can be fixed by better application management software.

We’ll take a look at some of the benefits of using up to date application management software, and some capabilities you should be looking for in a product.

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Startup Incubator Success Tracked in Decision.io

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In a great post by Jesse Rodgers of TribeHR, he mentioned the importance of identifying performance metrics for your startup incubator. This can help to determine how effective the startup incubator is (or isn’t). At the core of his message is measuring certain performance metrics at the application, in program (accepted), and out of program (graduated) stages and everywhere in between. In this post, we will show how Decision.io can serve a secondary function of tracking startup incubator success.

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How We Think About Decisions – the Fast, Slow, and the Lazy

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In the book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, author and Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman identifies two thinking systems we possess called “System 1″ and “System 2″. Each system is responsible for a very different kind of thinking – one system isn’t fundamentally better than the other. The trouble occurs when one system jumps in to do work best left to its buddy system. This happens more than we would like to admit, and so it is critical that we have a basic understanding of these systems, the tricks they can play on one another, and how to limit the negative effects of these tricks.

Lucky for you, that’s what we’re going to cover today!

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Business Intelligence 2.0 – Start Making Better Decisions Today

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In this post, we introduce Business Intelligence 2.0 (BI 2.0). In order to do so, we’ll talk about what business intelligence (BI) is, what the “2.0″ represents, and how BI 2.0 differs from its predecessor. Most importantly, we’ll discuss how BI 2.0 can help your organization to start making better decisions today!

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The Ultimate Decision-Making Mobile Application

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Today’s post is a little different from the others…

We’re officially announcing the Decision.io mobile application that will work on your smartphone and tablet!

It allows the reviewer to carry out all of their main responsibilities such as reviewing online applications, giving overall ratings and/or individual ratings for each piece of decision criteria, and to read and write internal and external comments.

Pretty awesome, eh?

You know what else is awesome? You have access to this right now! So log in, and I’ll take you through the application!

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ABCs of Decision-Making Biases – Part 2

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In Part 1 we looked at some of the biases that introduce themselves when generating potential solutions to be decided on later. There are also a number of decision-making biases that rear their ugly heads when it’s time to evaluate the proposed options and decide. This post will focus on just four of these biases.

So, let’s assume we’ve addressed all of the scary biases in the first stage of the decision making process, we’ve got our potential solutions in front of us bias free (congratulations!), and now it’s time to make the decision.

Not so fast! Let’s work on getting an understanding of some of the decision-making biases that introduce themselves during the all important decision-making stage. For now, let’s dive into four big ones, and we’ll tackle some of the others in future posts.

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Decisions – Why Your Team Needs Help to Make Them

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A rapidly changing decision making landscape

It is no secret that our world is rapidly becoming more complex, fast-paced, and globally connected. As a result of this change, teams are faced with the challenge of making mission critical decisions that involve a wealth of data, the evaluation of a number of viable alternatives, and the consideration of potential risks that may arise in the distant future.  Add the fact that these types of decisions often require a group of people with diverse skill sets to work together, fostering what is known as “collective intelligence”, and the decision-making process becomes increasingly difficult.

This would all be fine if we weren’t so ill-equipped to deal with our modern world and the challenges it presents to our organizations in the context of complex decision making!

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Decisions – the Most Important Thing in the Universe

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The mission

My mission is to add value to your organizations in the context of decision making.

I was brought onto the Decision.io team to focus primarily on inbound marketing. Basically, that’s going out into the digital world that is the internet, adding value where possible, helping organizations solve their problems, and in turn helping Decision.io grow into the world dominating collective decision-making platform it is destined to be. Much of my work requires reading about decision making, sharing other people’s decision-making related content, participating in online discussions about decision making, and of course writing this blog that is heavily focused on decision making and similar topics.

The honest truth

I did not come aboard because decision making was something that oozed out of my pores, resulting in a desire to read and write about it all day, every day.

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