Decision-Making

Sometimes I want to write something more personal in this Blog, but I always come up with my thought; – what’s the point? There are many important things instead of it. There are lots of people already did it and I think that’s enough as a good lesson for all of us. My life? Nothing so special and I am trying to avoid being self-center. So I will write more about everything except mine. Like this one: – once again my note about management, and hopefully you don’t get boring about it.

What I’ve wrote in the first paragraph is part of decision-making process. Even it is a simple case but there is a process behind it. You as a manager, decision-making is basically the essence of your job. The more a manager involve with the tasks the more he/she face the dilemma while he/she should take a decision. All managers would like to make good decisions. Making good decisions is something that every manager strives to do because they’re judged on the outcomes of those decisions. The overall quality of managerial decisions has a major influence on whether an organization succeeds or fails.

Do you know?  What does decision mean?

What is the decision-making process?

What is the meaning of problem?

Decision lexically means;- a choice or judgment that you make after thinking and talking about what is the best thing to do 

 The decision-making process consists of: -

1. Identifying a problem. Decision-making process begins with existence of a problem or a discrepancy between an existing and a desired state of affairs. Effectively identifying problems isn’t simple or trivial. Managers can be better at it if they understand the three characteristics of problems: being aware of them, being under pressure to act, a problem without pressure to act is a problem that can be postponed. To trigger the decision process, the problem must put pressure on the manager, for example deadlines, financial crises, competitor actions etc. And the last characteristic is having the resources needed to take action, if managers recognize a problem and under pressure to act but feel they have inadequate resources, they usually describe the situation as one in which un realistic expectations are being placed on them.
2. Identifying of decision criteria. Managers must determine what’s relevant in making a decision.
3. Allocation of weights to criteria. If the relevant criteria aren’t equally important, the decision maker must weight the items in order to give them the correct priority in the decision. Manager could use a simple valuation such as the more important of criteria has the highest value. For example, you need to buy a laptop, and then you can sort of the criteria that you need by its importance, such as memory and storage 10, battery life 8, weight 7, etc.
4. Development of alternatives that related to the criteria that has been created.
5. Analysis of alternatives, how? By evaluating the alternatives against the criteria established in step 2 and 3. Manager can compare the strengths and weaknesses of each alternative.
6. Selection of an alternative, in this step the manager chooses the best alternatives among those considered in previous steps. Once all pertinent criteria in the decision have been weighted and viable alternatives analyzed, manager merely chooses the alternative that generated the highest total score in step 5.
7. Implementation of the alternative.
8. Evaluation of decision effectiveness to see if the problem has been resolved.

Like I said previously, decision-making is the essence of managerial job that’s why a manager also called as decision maker. Much of manager’s decision making is routine, as you’re a manager for your self you’ve been facing the simplest decision-making process to decide what your lunch today is? It becomes routine for you everyday (perhaps) but still is a decision.

In the management functions, manager has to make decisions during his/her functions to planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. They have to answer such of these questions;-

•  What’re the organization‘s long-term objectives?
•  What strategies will best achieve those objectives?
•  How many employees should I have report direct to me?
•  When should organization implement a different structure?
•  How do I handle employees who appear to be low in motivation?
•  How will specific change affect worker productivity?
•  What type of management information system should the organization have?
•  What activities in the organization need to be controlled?
•  Etc

Imagine, is it a simple decision-making process to answer those problems? Problems are classified as; – structural problems and un-structural problems. The lower level of management decides something based on SOP (Standard Operating Procedure), rules, or by work instruction. It is usually for structural problems, and contrary to this, the un-structural problems are part of top-level management’s decision.

Different person different approach, some managers take rationality approach to make decision. Rationality means consistent, value-maximizing choices where the problem is clear and unambiguous, the decision maker’s goal is clear and specific, and the decision maker knows all possible alternatives. The second approach is bounded rationality that means decision are made rationality, but decision makers are limited by (bounded) their ability to process information so they end up satisfying; decision making may be strong influenced by organization’s culture, internal politics, power considerations, and escalation of commitment. The last approach is intuition, in which means making decision on the basis of experiences, feelings, and accumulated judgment.

During the decision-making, even for the routine problems sometimes the managers don’t come with the same decision. Why? Because probably they are under particular condition such as;- certainty – outcome of every alternatives is known, risk - can estimate likelihood of certain outcomes, uncertainty - outcomes are uncertain and cannot make reasonable probability estimates.

Decision Making Style

Manager’s decision-making style differ along two dimensions;- individual way of thinking and tolerance for ambiguity.

Some of managers are more rational and logical in the way of information processing. A rational type puts the information in order and makes sure that’s logical and consistent before making a decision. Others tend to be creative and intuitive.

Some of managers have a low tolerance for ambiguity. These types need consistency and order in the way they structure the information so that the ambiguity is minimized. On the other hand some managers can tolerate high level of ambiguity and are able to process many thoughts at the same time.

Decision makers using directive style have low tolerance for ambiguity and are rational in their way of thinking. These managers are efficient and logical. Directive types make fast decisions and focus on the short run. Their efficiency and speed in making decisions often result in their making decisions with minimal information and assessing few alternatives.

Decision makers with an analytical style have much greater tolerance for ambiguity than the first type. They want more information before making a decision and consider more alternatives. They are careful decision maker.

Decision makers with a conceptual style tend to be very broad in their outlook and look at many alternatives. Focusing on the long run and very good at finding creative solutions to problems.

Decision makers with a behavioral style work well in order. They often use meetings to communicate, although they try to avoid conflict or in other words they are concerned about the achievements of those around them and are respective suggestions from others. Acceptance by others is important to this decision-making style.

Most managers have characteristic more than one style. How about you? What’s your dominant style and alternate style?

Practically, managers not only use their own particular style to make a decision. Sometimes they also use “rules of thumbs” or heuristics (a method of solving problems by finding practical ways of dealing with them, learning from past experience) to simplify the decision-making.

Rules of thumbs can be useful to decision makers because they help make sense of complex, uncertain, and ambiguous information. Even though the managers use rules of thumbs it does not mean the decision is un-reliable or the rules of thumbs are not reliable or v.v.-because they might direct to bias or even error decision. Just be careful about it.

Today, in the decision making process-ones should considers and understand the cultural differences, know well when it’s time to quits -when it’s evident the decision isn’t working don’t be afraid to pull the plug, some managers might being block or distort negative information and don’t want to believe that their decision was bad. They become so attached to the decision and refuse to recognize to move on. In today’s environment it won’t work. Believe me. Use an effective decision making process: – focuses on what’s importance, logical and consistent, acknowledges both subjective and objective thinking and blends analytical with intuitive thinking, it requires only as much information and analysis as is necessary to resolve a particular case, encourages and guides the gathering of relevant information and informed opinion and straightforward, reliable, easy to use, and flexible. And also don’t forget to develop highly reliable organizations. Making decision in today’s fast moving world is not easy that’s why we need to learn about decision-making process to build this skill.

By the way, I encourage you to apply it for your personal. Every single of our activities needs decision-making process, which is as someone who believe in the almighty I suggest you to add the process with praying and asking the best decision for you particularly for the critical decision you’ve to make. As I said before even for the simply thing in your life you need to make decision, moreover for the harder situation such as: – choose the right partners, education plan for your kids, and even healthy life plan, right?

-Taken from many references-