Decision Matrix
A Decision Matrix scores several options against the same weighted criteria, so the option with the best overall number, not the loudest advocate, wins the argument.
Each option passes through the same weighted criteria to produce one score - a way to sharpen the argument, not settle it.
Reach for this when…
- A team is deadlocked between three options and every conversation just repeats the same points.
- A decision needs to be defensible later - to a board, a funder, a family member.
- People are quietly weighting criteria differently in their heads and don't realise it.
How to run it
- List the real options and the criteria that actually matter to the decision.
- Weight each criterion by importance, so the weights sum to a fixed total.
- Score every option against every criterion on the same scale.
- Multiply score by weight and total each option.
- Use the ranking to open the conversation about what to choose, not to close it automatically.
A worked example
Situation. Chidi Okafor ran Okafor Steelworks, a mid-sized fabrication plant outside Lagos, Nigeria, choosing between three new cutting machines, with the loudest engineer's preference usually winning.
Applied. He built a matrix scoring each machine on cost, maintenance downtime, operator training time and output speed, weighted by what actually mattered to the plant that year.
Result. The cheapest machine, the engineer's favourite, scored lowest once training time and downtime were weighted properly. The plant bought the mid-priced option and cut changeover time within the quarter.
The catch
The matrix looks objective but the weights are opinions wearing numbers, and whoever sets the weights quietly decides the winner before any scoring happens. It also flattens genuine trade-offs into a single score, which can hide that the top-ranked option is mediocre everywhere rather than excellent where it counts.
If changing one person's weight would flip the winner, the matrix hasn't decided anything, it's just made the argument more precise.