Every day we make many decisions such as what to have for breakfast, which route to take to a meeting, to which movie to watch in the evening. Most of our decisions don’t require much critical thinking. Yet, there are those decisions that are difficult to make given the alternatives we face and the sheer severity of the decisions. These types of decisions take a toll on our brain and emotions. For instance, do you take the new job oversees that is a 18% increase in your salary and move the family, or stay where you’re at not getting the raise or disrupting your family? Do you sell your business and move on to another chapter in your life, or keep it for another few years waiting to time the market exactly right for a bigger payout?
To help you make those difficult decisions, this book provides a simple five-step process that considers the decision based on your wants and needs. The framework also looks at the decision from a totality view and includes your emotions in the process as well. The framework is efficient, repeatable, and reliable and can be used in your personal or business life. And by the end of the book, you’ll be able to quantify your alternatives so that you can choose the one with the highest score and thus make the best decision, for you.
Gerard Ibarra, Ph.D., is a consultant, author, speaker, and serial entrepreneur. He assists and trains companies faced with multiple alternatives, made even more difficult by competing departments or individuals, to converge on one that benefits the company and not the department or individual. His process is quantitative and qualitative, repeatable, reliable, consistent, and easy to use, and streamlines the decision-making process and improves the company’s likelihood to make better decisions.
Gerard has an analytical background coupled with leadership knowhow, and experienced in opening, expanding, and streamlining operations. His skills are in logistics, industrial and systems engineering, operation planning, and strategic leadership and business development. He has over thirty years of professional experience in multiple capacities from senior-level positions for various companies, to CEO of Jaguar Logistics. He was also the founder/co-founder of three technology companies of which one was sold.
Lastly, Gerard received his Ph.D. in applied science from Southern Methodist University. He has taught graduate courses in logistics systems engineering at SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering, and supply chain management and e-Business at the University of Dallas Graduate School of Management.
This chapter on emotions was one that I had many conversations with an expert on the subject. I wanted to convey to the reader that there are emotions buried deep inside us that we may or may not be aware of consciously. And in our decision-making process (DMP), they play a role in how we may choose between alternatives. We may want something that is completely out of our reach, for many reasons, and thus we begin our DMP with an item or such, that we believe is somewhat attainable. From there, we stairstep downward to an item that is within our reach. That is where we coined the term “surrogate emotions.” Emotions that you attempt to fulfill with a lesser one that still satisfies you somewhat. You convinced yourself at the end that the decision made was the best one where in fact, it was not.
So, I tend to cover a term, surrogate emotions, which may already exist and called something different. Yet, I could not find anything exactly what I proposed on the subject. Be as it may, your surrogate emotions can influence you more than you think, and if you don’t recognize them, all the analysis you may do based on my framework may not lead you to the most effective decision.
Book Excerpt
Good Decisions, Better Outcomes
No doubt about it, emotions are a complex and an important part of our life. I’ll discuss what emotions are first. Then, I’ll introduce a concept relating to our emotions that I refer to as our “surrogateemotions.”
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