The decision matrix

Tareq al-Suwaidan teaches 'the matrix' as one of the best decision-making methods: it does not fit every decision but fits most of them, and software exists that computes the decision directly from the conditions and the alternatives ^{1 2}.

Conditions are divided into essential and preferential and kept wholly separate ³. On the essential conditions, offending alternatives are excluded outright — like a KPI: a per-person cost one hair above sixty dinars and the hotel falls — beginning with the conditions easiest to check (the conference dates, distance from the airport, room count) and leaving the hardest to compute (cost) for last, saving effort ^{4 5}. The surviving alternatives are then scored on the preferential conditions, and the winner is the highest scorer; in a deeper variant the conditions carry weights (three hundred points for price, twenty for a preferential condition) computed only after the essentials are passed ^{6 7 8}.

He states that a decision improves as alternatives multiply: whoever wants to hire interviews not three but twenty; whoever buys a house sees not two but thirty or forty — and he tells of a trainee who used the matrix to buy a car the day after the course and came out quickly with what he wanted ^{9 10}. He applies it to hiring: the essential and preferential conditions are written before applications arrive, applications failing an essential are set aside before any interview, and interviews serve only to compare preferentials; his rule is 'never hire out of pity' (the speaker's view) ^{11 12}.