Using the Weighted Decision Matrix to make a choice

byKettei

1.4K followers

Updated 6 years ago

I've been feeling a little unfocused over the last week or so.

My social media posting dried up and I've struggled to write content for my niche website.

As a short-term remedy I started the Bootcamp training and started setting up a new website to promote Wealthy Affiliate. This has been interesting because I like the difference in tone in the Bootcamp training over the Certification.

The trouble is, this has left me somewhat diverted in my attention.

I want to start publishing content to my niche website again (and I have started writing a new content piece) but at the same time, I need to build up my articles on my boot camp site. It's left me with a bit of a dilemma.

I want to carry on with the Bootcamp training and start referring people to WA but I'm not willing to abandon my fledgling niche site.

Ironically, this wasn't a problem when I was struggling for inspiration with my niche site but over the last few days I've brainstormed some ideas for content (as a break from client work on my day job or looking after the kids) and I've now got a list of ideas for my next five posts.

To help me make a decision that I'd be happy with, I decided to employ a decision-making tool that I've used in my professional life called the Weighted Decision Matrix.

The Weighted Decision Matrix

A Weighted Decision Matrix is a planning tool to help you to make a decision based on a complicated number of factors. The way it works is like this:

1. Create a table with a list of choices you need to make as the first column.
   In my case it's three choices:
1. Carry on with my niche site and shelve the boot camp site
2. Carry on with the boot camp site and shelve the niche site
3. Attempt to carry on with both, allocating time to work on each one
2. Add columns to the table, where each column represents a factor in the decision.
   In my case, the factors in the decision are:
1. TIME: Would this choice result in profit sooner?
2. PREFERENCE: Intuitively, what is my preference for that choice?
3. PROFIT: Would the choice result in greater profit
4. MOTIVATION: Would the choice keep me motivated to continue with WA?
3. Score each choice for each factor
4. Apply a value to each factor, based on its importance to the decision. This is the weight score. You might use 10 for one, 20 for another and 40 for a really important one.
5. Multiply the score you entered for each choice and factor by the factor's weight score.
6. Finally, add up the columns for each choice row.

This might sound complicated as I describe it but in practice, it's actually very easy to do and it's helped me to make difficult decisions in my professional life.

The initial choice scores, without weights

The image below shows the scores applied before adding the weightings.

As you can see, already it looks like the preference is to continue both sites.

Adding the factor weightings

In order to assign the weights to each factor, I made the following decisions:

• Time to profit - It doesn't really matter to me when I make a profit, as long as it happens (within reason). It's not going to happen at all, if I'm not motivated enough to write the content. (10)
  
• Preference : My personal preference is quite important. I need to be happy with the choice or it will affect my motivation. (20)
• Potential Profit : It's really important that whatever choice I make offers the best return on my investment of time. (30)
• Maintain Motivation : It's very important that whatever choice I make will help me to stay motivated as I need to keep creating content. (30)

Once I assign the weighted values, my decision matrix looks like this (I've highlighted the row with the highest total).

Conclusion

Although it will involve far more work and will probably take much longer to achieve a profit, the decision matrix has told me that I clearly need to continue with both sites as it will enable me to maintain motivation and in the long run could result in a greater return (because I'll have two websites producing commissions instead of one).

One of the criticisms of the weighted decision matrix as a tool is that personal bias becomes an unconscious (or even very conscious) part of the values that are entered.

My response to that is that by thinking about the values to ascribe to each factor for each choice, you are engaging in a decision-making process as you enter the values. The final score is just a confirmation.

You can see on the matrix that my personal preference was actually to stick with the niche site but because I weighted my personal preference as less important than the potential profit and maintaining motivation, that choice ultimately lost.

Now that I've been through the process, I feel happy to accept the numbers and push forward with both sites. I will just have to be careful to allocate time to each one to ensure that I keep publishing the content and working towards success.

New Training Module

Following the feedback of a couple of members in the comments, I've created a training module that expands upon this blog post. It features:

• More images
• An explanation of factor selection
• Visual explanation of the calculations
  
• A Google Sheets example you can copy to your own account and play with

Click here to view the training