When You're Deciding to Prioritize

Michelle Florendo is a decision engineer and executive coach who is passionate about teaching people how to make decisions with less stress and more clarity. Over the past decade, she has shown hundreds of driven professionals how to use the principles of decision science to grow their impact and find fulfillment.

She joins Amy and Bryan on the podcast today to introduce Decision Engineering to us to improve our skills, understand what factors go into decisions, and assess what will become of our society as we’re inundated with more opportunities yet more uncertainty.

Segment One: What’s a Decision Engineer?

[02:07] Michelle has experienced enough dinner table conversations to know how best to describe her profession, so when asked what it is she does, she’s ready to roll.

Segment Two: What’s the Decision-Making Process?

[5:21] Everybody makes decisions, and Michelle understands the stress involved in them. She teaches our hosts and listeners the basis of decision making; it’s far more complicated than actively trying to make “good” decisions and avoid making a “bad” one.

Segment Three: How do we use emotions as data?

[14:25] Emotions tend to be put to the wayside when making decisions, but not to Michelle. From her experience, emotions can serve as vital data to guide the decision-making process. The challenge is to be able to observe them rather than let them overtake the rational mind.  

Segment Four: Does society have the tools to make decisions

[20:10] The pandemic was a pivotal moment in history to prompt society's reconsideration. Companies are moving at a breakneck pace on a day-to-day basis, but changes are coming rapidly as well. This leads to overwhelm and paralysis.

Segment Five: How do we properly separate ourselves from our decisions?

[25:09] Decisions are about what we can control and identify what we cannot. When options change so do opportunities.

Segment Six: The frameworks we should know about

[32:15] Along with the brilliant insights shared so far, we ask Michelle to round out where we could go next to improve our decision-making expertise.

Segment Seven: The alternative to the Pro-Con list

[34:35] The touchstone of decision-making has always been the pro-con list, but Michelle breaks down an alternative most would consider more attractive and less concerning.

Guest Links

Podcast: askadecisionengineer.com

Website: michelleflorendo.com

Course (starts July 14): Decision Mapping: Make Business Decisions with Less Stress and More Clarity (stanford.edu)

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michelleflorendo

Instagram: instagram.com/thedecisiongeek

Twitter: twitter.com/thedecisiongeek

Our Links

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This podcast is brought to you by WITH Wellness. Co-hosted by Amy and Bryan Lattimore, Produced and edited by Joseph Ianni. Music provided royalty free by contributing artists ItsWatr, ComaStudio and Coma-Media. Recorded on Riverside.FM. Album Art designed by Andrea Facenda.