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Evaluating Potential Solutions

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn looks at how evaluating options determines the outcome of the decision you need to make. If you find that the criteria are hard to come up with, you may want to reframe the problem.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

From your framing of the problem, you will probably have a good idea of the criteria you will need for evaluating the list of options. If you’ve fully understood the problem, the criteria should be apparent. Evaluating options determines the outcome of the decision. If you find that the criteria are hard to come up with, you may want to reframe the problem.

Note: Material from books, articles, etc., by all the authors listed in the first article of the series titled “Decisions” is included in this article. Every one of them had ideas worth including. This writer urges the reader who wants to learn more about making decisions to consult their work.

Need to know: Decision criteria are questions that must be asked of every option being considered. Acceptable criteria should be clear and simple. They should avoid false sophistication from the use of jargon. They should help sort all options/outcomes in order of most to least desirable.


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About Wayne Lynn

Wayne Lynn is an advocate of the adage that "you can't manage what you can't measure".  Combining his considerable strengths in leadership, economics, and strategy with broad experience in both public and private companies, he brings focus and discipline to the task of creating and sustaining success in today's chaotic environment.

Wayne has managed businesses ranging in size from $5 million to $500million in annual sales.  He has guided those organizations through a number of diverse market sectors including magazines, catalogs, inserts, direct mail, and general commercial printing.

A student as well as a practitioner of the fine art of business, Wayne's latest focus is on helping business leaders make their companies more viable economically, more relevant in the market place, more adaptive to constant change, and more durable in the long haul.  It's about people, what they know, and how well they execute on what they know.

Wayne can be reached at 704-516-7787 or at [email protected].

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