Fact-based decision making or evidence-based decision making is widely adopted in various fields particularly in management and business settings.
Evidence-based decision making is based on the combination of using critical thinking and the best available evidence.
In any management and business settings, it is important that professional adopt this approach because of the huge impact management decisions have on the working lives and wellbeing of people in all sorts of organisations worldwide.
In this approach, among the things that one can do to be more evidence-based way is through healthy scepticism.
In a video posted by the Centre for Evidence Based Management, it was noted that through healthy scepticism, one need to question the information that are given and what they are told to do.
Regardless of where the source came from, one can question of what does the evidence means, can you trust it or should you believe it.
Another way for any individuals or organizations in implementing the evidence-based approach is to encourage the use of the word ‘why’.
For instance, do ask why are we implementing a certain program or what is the actually reason of how things are done certain way and if that reasons are based on any explicit evidence.
Another way is to take an evidence-based approach to any important problem by going through the steps and looking at the sources of evidence.
The steps include asking questions, acquiring relevant information or outcomes, appraise the quality of that evidence, aggregate the evidence by summarizing or pulling it together and applying it to the decision one is making.
This is important to identify the problem as well as the solution to that problem.
Lastly, do ask yourself, “Should we just do stuff, or do stuff that’s more likely to get the results you want?”
If it is the latter, using evidence-based decision making is a good place to start thinking into how you can be more effective especially as a professional in a working environment.
