Organizational Management 101 : Decision Making Process
Decision making is the topic for this part of our guide to organizational management…
Decisions, big and small, need to be made every day, and for an organization to be effective, its managers need to be able to constantly solve problems and make decisions that are of benefit to it.
It is critical to first prioritize issues and problems based on the issue’s potential effect on the organization. Those that stand to have the greatest impact should be dealt with first, and all problems need to be addressed in a systematic way prior to a decision being made.
Because a first impression is just that, and does not necessarily reflect the entire situation, a manager must avoid jumping to conclusions. Collecting information from more than one source to avoid bias, and completely assessing all pertinent (and verifiable) information prior to rendering a decision is strongly recommended.
Once full knowledge of the problem or situation has been acquired, possible options and solutions should be brainstormed. These should be wide-ranging and should be based on the issue as viewed from different perspectives.
Having identified a set of options and solutions, feedback and suggestions on them, along with alternatives, should be sought from consultations with others. For the most part, group decisions (particularly where the group contains people who the end decision will affect) are preferable to those made by individuals as a pool of knowledge, skills and experience can be drawn upon.
There exists a risk that the individual actually making a decision may be too close to the issue to render a reasonable solution, and that is where some tools, methods of analysis and different techniques can be very beneficial. Some of these include Pareto Analysis; Paired Comparison Analysis; Grid Analysis; PMI; Six Thinking Hats; Starbursting; and Decision Trees. These methods will not provide a hard and fast decision for you, but will guide you in the right direction, using more of a scientific approach.
Then comes the time to weigh the pros and cons of a decision. Which option or solution gives most to the organization whilst taking least from it? Few decisions will be as clear cut to hold no drawbacks. Negatives are acceptable though, so long as the positives sufficiently outweigh them.