If I were ever asked in a job interview about my strengths and weaknesses, one of the strengths I would talk about would be my ability to make decisions.

When it comes to my personal life, I can say without a doubt that all the decisions I’ve made have been right for me at that moment in time. When faced with a decision, I always have a strong gut feeling that tells me what to do. I may feel a twinge of regret sometimes, but most often, I am able to go forward and carry out my plans.

I think I live up to what Paul Wolfowitz*, current head of the World Bank, believes a good decision maker should be. In the July/August issue of The Atlantic (yes, I’m still making my way through it), he said this about decision-making:

I think someone once said that decision-making is usually trying to choose the least crappy of the various alternatives. It does seem to me that so many things we have to decide are fifty-five–forty-five decisions, or sixty–forty decisions. Arrogance is one of the worst failings in a senior decision-maker. I really admire people like President Bush and Harry Truman, who were good at it. Dean Acheson said about Truman that he was free of that most crippling of emotions, regret. Once he made a decision, he moved on. And I think that’s what characterizes really good decision-makers.

There is this sort of intellectual notion that there is such a thing as perfect knowledge, and you wait to get perfect knowledge before you make a decision. In the first place, even if there were perfect knowledge, it would be too late by the time you got it. And secondly, there is no such thing. Accepting the imperfection of knowledge is a very important part of being a great decision-maker.

Are you a good decision maker?

*I’m not exactly a fan, but I did find his interview interesting.