Well-informed decision-making takes up-to-date information, sound knowledge, and practical wisdom. As Choo in the Knowing Organization points out, organizational knowledge creating activities involve importing knowledge, shared problem-solving, implementing and integrating new tools into its operations, and experimenting and prototyping (p. 152).
"The fundamental task of an organization is to integrate the knowledge and coordinate the efforts of its many specialized individuals. Four mechanisms for integrating specialized knowledge are rules and directives, sequencing, routines, and group problem solving and decision making (p. 196)."
The decision-making process works best when it is an "intentional" process that is both formal and informal, structured and unstructured, and reasoned and intuitive. It involves:
- Describing, clarifying and understanding the situation, issue, and/or problem.
Identifying and articulating the causes and factors influencing the situation or issues. - Compiling and critically analyzing the above, and collecting all of the data that is reasonably and realistically possible.
- Understanding one's biases, fears, self-interest in the situation, etc.
Discussing information, questions, insights, etc. with colleagues and experts who have similar and opposing views, as well as with mentors. - Outlining all possible solutions or decisions, and discerning the pros and cons of each.
- Discerning the ramifications and consequences of each solution or decision.
- Taking time to reflect and deliberate to eliminate non-workable possibilities.
- Making a choice from the viable possibilities.
- Assess and evaluate the outcomes.
How do you make professional decisions? What are the strengths and limitations of your process?
Chuck Piazza
5 comments:
Decision making is a mental process which every individual need to take intentionally about the outcome of incurred problem. The outcome could be an action or opinion of choice. The main task of any organization or manager is to be able to make proper and timely decisions, to integrate the knowledge and coordinate the efforts of many specialized individuals into a team effort. Before making decision, we need to first identify and articulate the causes of the problem, understand the situation, analyze and compile the data required and then outline all the possible solutions with pros and cons. We also need to take enough time for reflection before making the decisions.
Decision making is a continuous process integrated with the environment and growth of the organization. It is not a onetime process, each and every step right from the planning to the production, marketing, bringing the product in the market and selling to the right consumer, managers need to analyze and make decisions.
There are many books and articles on Decision making. One of the articles which really interested me is “The Season of Snap Judgments” – On McGrath by Steve Minter from Industry Week, Cleveland May 2010 as it talks interestingly about Decision Making. In this article, it is described how companies operate with razor-thin margins of error in decision making in corporate America and how significant effective decision making is for any organization and Michael E. McGrath’s opinion on decision making. He draws on his considerable experience, in writing about decision-making.
If we make bad decisions, we will have to face the consequences; examples of bad decisions are a huge problem in business and government. The worst decisions "are those that are never made." Problems such as unsustainable pension plans fester until the day of reckoning finally come, leaving everyone to ask: "Why didn't someone decide to fix this earlier?"
I will conclude with a quote from Drucker, “Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.” Hence effective decision making is vital in every organization than postponing or ignoring without action at the right time at every level. As Drucker says “Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.”
When I am making decisions I utilize both formal and informal processes, and I often find myself makin sure that I am not allowing my personal feelings to get in the way. If it is a decision that I want to be sure is the best decision for the group; I always get the input of my peers and when necessary my superiors before implementing a change especially if it involves multiple people in adverse ways. My limitatins to decision making would be that some of them are based on contract language rather than what is good for everyone involved. My strengths in decision making would be that I am very receptive to input or feedback from mystaff about most decisions.
How do you make professional decisions? What are the strengths and limitations of your process?
There are many ways a professional decision as a work place is made. Usually between an employee and their supervisor and sometimes, it may take a roundtable of discussions to make a decision.
My strengths are being able to voice out my opinion for my superiors to consider into discussion making. As far as limitations are concerned, what decision is made at the end when other managers are concerned can be out of my reach.
: By allowing team members to consider proposals before meetings gives them the time to carefully formulate their reactions. This will improve the quality of discussion and the resulting decisions. One main factor of improving decision making is openness personality. Openness personality deals with intellectual activity, cultural sophistication, thoughtfulness, originality, imagination, need for variety and preference.
Openness factors consist of behavior that convey the willingness and readiness to entertain and experience novelty, whether in interests, people, situations, values or ideas, and a sense of divergent and creative thinking. Also, by providing the appropriate environment can increase the team’s performance and reduce conflict. Once the employees possess this/that feeling, they have a greater sense of connection to the organization, they feel like an integral part of a team and the organization to make sound decisions, thereby, improving decision making.
When making decisions, I find that my process changes depending on a variety of factors. Among those factors are things such as determining the urgency factor (i.e., how quickly do we need this decision), how many people will be impacted, who will be impacted, cost, and who is in need of the final outcome that will result from the decision? Given time to do so, I have a more structured process of researching the issue, gathering and analyzing data (including contacting Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) if necessary), and determining pros and cons of different paths that can be taken with the issue at hand. From there, if I have the authority to do so, I can then come to a decision and create a very brief summary for all pertinent parties. If I do not have the authority to make the final decision, I produce a brief summary for all pertinent parties with (typically) two – three top options, their pros and cons, and a request for feedback and/or a decision by a specific date so that we can hit our targeted timeframe.
If there is plenty of time in which to complete all of the above listed steps, this decision process has proved itself to be quite effective for me. It allows for a thorough analysis of the subject matter and feedback from others. The downside is that, particularly for complex issues, this style takes a longer period of time. If there is a situation in which time is of the essence, having a structured process such as this is not going to provide the desired outcome in the necessary timeframe. In these types of situations, I have found that I can still utilize portions of this structured process, while adjusting it to suit the needs of the current situation. Sometimes a fair amount of time can be saved in the information gathering process alone. Additionally, ensuring that a small but complete number of options with pros and cons are covered, while flagging items for follow-up at various stages of the process, can assist in ensuring that the process does not lose momentum. It is important to also note that looking to others for input means a broader knowledge-base, but it also means that there is more data to sort through when searching for the best decision.
Either way, my method of decision-making involves more than just me sitting in my office and making decisions without the benefit of others’ knowledge and expertise. Admittedly, as time constraints become more of a factor it can lose some of its structure – sometimes it is something as simple as popping into the office next door or sending a colleague a SameTime message – but it does factor in points of view aside from my own.
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