Making decisions is both an art and a scientific endeavor. A decision represents a call to action in some future state; decisions are based on information that often consists of assumptions.
Decision makers use their own personal values and assumptions and past experiences and/or intuitions to arrive at their decisions. All of this individualistic assessment of a situation is part of the artful approach to decision making.
Strategic decisions represent any future-oriented decision that has high value and importance for the decision maker. As a decision maker, it is important to keep a detailed mental and physical engagement with the whole implementation planning process---including delegating responsibility and accountability to other people. Also, you should know better than anyone else who the resisters and assistors are regarding the solution you are proposing and how to work with them strategically.
The purpose of “Smart Decisions” is to offer decision makers a specific thinking framework following a sequential, five-step model of the decision- making process. A decision-making process has to be uniquely applied to each of three different situational states—a current state, a future state, and finally, a transitional journey state occurring between the current and future states. Each of these situational states represents a different state of mind, both real and anticipatory, for the decision maker.
Source: Thomas N. Martin: Smart Decisions: The Art of Strategic Thinking for the Decision-Making Process