How Can I Make Great Decisions...????

How can one make great decisions?? This endeavour to have a common place for us, classmates to blog is a great idea.. Or is it?? Yes, it is a great idea.. but was the decision to go ahead with it a great one? How do we recognize if it is or not? Can one really make good decisions?? If yes, how do i do it??

Oh, i know .. i have just been asking a lot of repetitive questions in the last paragraph... So how did i get this thought?? Well, Santheep Remanan sent us a group mail, a love story, a couple of days ago.. It was about a guy who couldn't bring up the courage to tell his best friend that he was in love with her.. The story ends on a tragic note, when he reads her diary after her death and realises that she too shared the same feelings.. The mail ended by asking us to reveal our love , if we do have the feelings for someone ...and hoping that, at least after we have read this mail, we would take the right decision of telling our love..

Thats when i started wondering.. The mail says its the best decision because in the story the girl did share his feelings..  what if she did not and that wrecked their friendship?? Now that would make the same decision a bad decision.. won't it??

So i asked again.. whats a good decision.. ??

I then sat in office checking the scores of a lousy india v zimbabwe match.. I was seething with anger at some of the decisions raina didn't make as a captain.. Then i questioned me.. suppose the decisions that he did take had succeeded, wouldn't i be seeing the same stuff differently?? calling him a great strategist.. a great decision maker.. wouldn't i??

So i asked again.. whats a good decision..??

Aren't there any good decision?? so i started thinking from the other side..  are there bad decisions?? i got the answer very easily... coz an hour ago i had called and showed the score to my senior team mate, a cricket enthusiast.. well, he asked me for the work he had assigned me .. and on hearing that i hadn't finished, he told me to close browser and finish the job... easy.. bad decision.. but again, i thought.. what if he had just enjoyed (or rather not) the score and said a few curses with me and called indian players a few names and went away?? wouldn't think that it wasnt a bad decision then??

But there has to be a bad decision , even if i cant find a good one... Then i found it.. So simple.. jumping into a hungry lion's cage.. There i have it.. My bad decision... So, i thought.. A decision that offers me nothing other than a bad outcome will always qualify as a bad decision.. So, i went back to finding what a good decision was...

What ever i thought of, i couldn't find a decision which would identify itself as a good decision without the help of hindsight... But just then i thought, hold it.. i can find a good decision.. getting out of the hungry lion's cage before it notices me, has to be a good decision.. So now i have similarly found out the definition of a good decision... any decision that offers me nothing other than a good outcome..

But again i was not satisfied.. These decision are by default good decisions or bad decisions.. even before you make it, you know its one.. But these comprise just a tiny percentage of the decisions that we make in our life.. So what about the rest of the decisions which have a reasonable chance of success and failure??

I thought for a while and came up with the following conclusion.. Barring the essential good decisions and bad decisions , there aren't any good decisions or bad decisions.. There are merely decisions.. You will only know if its good or bad, after the outcome of the decision has happened.. Meaning, hindsight is what decides what a decision is.. For example, whether the decision to have this kind of an endeavor to bring our classmates together, was a good decision or bad decision, would be decided by how it works out.. If we get more people joining hands with us, we would deem this a success, else a great failed attempt.. So its all decided in hindsight...

So what makes one a good decision maker?? Its his ability to make decisions that are more likely to have an outcome that would classify his decision as a good one..  This comes with experience.. I can show examples from cricketing field , as thats my area of expertise.. A captain when he sends in a pinch hitter doesn't know if its a good decision or not.. But i know of a captain called Hansie Cronje, who in his tenure had sent out numerous pinch hitters including Boje, Klusener, Symcox, Boucher .. and most of them had been successful.. Now people call him, Stephen Fleming, Steve Waugh as excellent strategists and captains.. why?? coz their decision making skills are so good that most of the times their decisions yield the expected outcome..

So, by the time i left the office i had pretty formed my own theory about decision making.. I can never make great decisions.. I can always make decisions which will chose their own paths and destinies.. But by observing the outcomes of such decisions, i can fine tune my ability to make decisions to ensure that, the decisions i make will end as a good decision more often than not... And i will never blame anyone for making a bad decision.. Because i believe that no one makes a bad decision intentionally.. They just make decisions which end up as bad ones.. I will always try to ensure that , if i have made a bad decision , when the situation presents itself the next time,  i would make a decision which would probably end up as the right one.... Then i decided to walk home , without taking the cab...  A bad decision.. ;) (again, in hindsight)