Organizational Management : Making Decisions
In this part of our guide to organizational management we cover decision making…
Effective managers are tasked with making decisions ranging from large to small on a daily basis. An effective organization employs managers who are problem-solvers and who can make good decisions constantly.
The first step in doing so is to prioritize problems according to the effect they have on the organization, ensuring that decisions are made first on the ones of most significance to the organization. Having prioritized, each problem should then be worked through systematically before a final decision is made on it.
Jumping to conclusions should be avoided as first impressions rarely give the whole picture – obtaining and assessing all the information available being the best way to prevent doing this. Such information should ideally be from more than one source to prevent bias and should be verifiable in some way.
Collecting information in order to obtain a complete understanding of the issue is only the first step, however. Once the information is available, then it is wise to brainstorm different solutions and possible options in order to get more than one perspective. Such options can start out as wide-ranging, and then can be narrowed down to fit the scope of the problem.
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.
Available assistance in the decision-making process can come in the form of Pareto Analysis, Paired Comparison Analysis, Grid Analysis, PMI, Six Thinking Hats, Starbursting, and Decision Trees, to name but a few. These techniques should not be relied upon solely to make a decision, but should be used to guide the process and offer a more scientific-approach. This is of particular importance where the decision-maker is a little too close to the issue to see the bigger picture.
The final step will be to weigh the positive benefit of each proposed solution against any negative impact such decision may incur, as few solutions can be implemented without some draw-back. The best solution will be the one that offers the most positive benefit, with the least likelihood of negative side-effects.