IntroductionThinking critically and making decisions are important parts of today's business environment. It is important to understand how the decision-making process works and the steps involved. The nine stages of the decision-making process are: identify the problem, define the criteria, establish goals and objectives, evaluate the effect of the problem, identify the causes of the problem, frame the alternatives, evaluate the impact of the alternatives, make the decision, implement decision making and impact measurement. (Decision, 2007.) By using various methods and tools to assist in making important business decisions, an individual can ensure that the decisions made are as successful as possible. In this article we will look at how the decision making process can be followed using various tools and techniques to make successful business decisions using the same tools and techniques during a critical thinking business scenario. The article will also discuss how different tools and techniques could have been used to make different, but still successful, decisions. The pacing techniques provided a blueprint on how to achieve the business objective through problem identification, how to resolve them, and implementation. The criteria matrix was the technique used to identify problems. The criteria matrix provided an easy way to prioritize, organize, and classify issues into categories deemed critical or non-critical, and whether each was urgent or non-urgent. This was also a controlled way to decide what the problem was because you had all the information to start making decisions. This technique helped determine the criticality of the issues, from problem identification to... middle of paper... optimal for our situation, we were able to further examine improvements to our processes and decisions that will be help us in the future. By running the simulation it was also possible to see exactly how the tools can work in everyday American business and how we can improve our individual processes that we currently use. Lowy, A. & Hood, P. (2004). The power of the 2x2 matrix: Using 2x2 thinking to solve business problems and make better decisions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Sixsigmapc.com. (2005). The decision-making hierarchy-SkillBrief. Retrieved February 9, 2008, from http://www.sixsigmaspc.com/dictionary/criteria-matrix.htmlWikipedia.com (2008) Brainstorming. Retrieved February 9, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming