In its simplest sense, decision-making is the act of choosing between two or more courses of action. Decision making is a key skill in the workplace and is particularly important if you want to be an effective leader. When decisions have to be made, there are several stages that you should go through to reach a practical solution. Understand the meaning and importance of decision making and how to look at it as a process.
Decision-making is an activity that all of us involved in almost day in and day out. You will possibly agree that decision making is a part of everyday life. Similarly, making decisions by both individuals and groups is a fundamental aspect of life in organizations.
It is the most common and crucial work role of executives. The ability to make timely decisions, to exercise independent judgment, and to gain positive results is the basic nature of effective decision making. Whether you are at a board meeting or in the playground, you are almost constantly making decisions, sometimes working on several at the same time.
These may be major or minor, but some of these might have proved to be effective decisions, viz. appropriate, timely, and acceptable. Some of your decisions might have been wrong, but you knew that there was something worse than a few wrong decisions and that was indecision!
Making decisions has been identified as one of the primary responsibilities of any manager. Decisions may involve allocating resources, appointing people, investing capital, or introducing new products. If resources like men, money, machines, materials, time, and. space was abundant, clearly, any planning would be unnecessary. But, typically, resources are scarce and so there is a need for planning.
Some of the decisions may be of a routine type and repetitive in nature and some may be strategic in nature which may require a lot of systematic and scientific analysis. In some cases the decision-maker may not have complete knowledge about decision alternatives (i.e., High Problem Complexity) or about the outcome of a chosen alternative (i.e. High Outcome Uncertainty). These conditions of knowledge are often referred to as states of nature and have been labelled as:
The decision-making process can be carried out either by individuals acting alone or by groups. The quality of our decisions is often much poorer than we realize. Selective perception tends to bias the information we use in making decisions and our attitudes and values influence how we interpret that information. Many factors create bias and degrade our decisions and limit our understanding of the decision making problem,
Sometimes making a decision is facilitated by the background information and circumstances but there are occasions when one is left into blank and the manager is forced to make a decision. Such decisions may not lead to the target and may also create undesirable situations and regulations which ultimately may mar the whole process.
To overcome this problem there are several models and theories which are developed to explain decision making and how effectively you can make a decision. Though there is no magic formula for analyzing data, considering option,s and making a winning determination, there is a multistep process to arrive at decision. Using the process approach for decision making will enable us to make better quality decisions than we do presently. In order to increase our effectiveness in decision making, we must first understand the decision-making process. Following a process offers the greatest chance of resolving many problems.
Authoritarian Leadership Style
Although generally considered as a traditional, outdated, and non-preferred style of leadership, the autocratic style still can be used effectively in certain situations. It is a leadership style characterized by individual absolute control over a group. If you work for an autocratic leader, your job is usually to do what you're told. Learn more about this style and situations where this could be an effective style to use and when to avoid this type of approach. Analyze the characteristics of this style to evaluate if your followers consider you an authoritarian leader!
Generating Ideas using Brainstorming
The brainstorming technique was developed by Alex F. Osborn in 1957 and brainstorming means where a team of members generates a large amount of alternative fruitful ideas on a specific problem without any criticism and then evaluates each idea in terms of their pros and cons. Brainstorming techniques fall into four broad categories: visioning, exploring, modifying, and experimenting.
Storming Stage of Team Development
Storming is the second stage of team development and this stage is characterized by a bid for power and inter-personal conflicts. Learn the key factors that occur in the storming stage and the strategies that a team leader can adopt to pass this stage of high winds
Collaborative leadership is all about collaborative problem-solving and decision-making or can also be defined as the leadership of a collaborative effort. . The term started to appear in the mid-1990s in response to the formation of long term public-private partnerships to rebuild public infrastructure. Learn how you can use principles of collaborative leadership to enhance your leadership skills for being an effective leader.
“Level 5 Leadership”, this term was coined by Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” and it is all about achieving "Greatness" as a leader. This article will explain what we mean by Level 5 Leadership and what the characteristics of a Level 5 leader are. What it takes to achieve greatness as a leader, and what are the steps and strategies that one can use to move up to this top level of leadership.
Many different types of teams have been identified by social scientists. Managers may encounter the diverse types of challenges while managing different kinds of teams. Challenges associated with Cross-Functional Teams might be different from that of a Geographically Dispersed Team or a Virtual Team. This article explores some common categories and subtypes of teams.
At different points in your professional career, it is helpful to identify your core values. Values are the qualities considered to be the most important guiding principles that determine the priorities in your life and greatly influence your career choices. Your career brings happiness when it is in agreement with the beliefs you have about what is important and meaningful to you. Awareness of your values will help you develop a clearer sense of what's most important to you in life.
Investment Theory of Creativity
Sternberg in the year 2006, proposed the investment and confluence theory focused on understanding creativity. According to the investment theory, creativity requires a confluence of six distinct but interrelated resources known as intellectual abilities, knowledge, styles of thinking, personality, motivation, and environment. It emphasizes that creativity is not about one thing, but about a system of things.
Building Perfect Creative Team
One misconception around creativity is that creative act is essentially solitary. Most of the world's important inventions resulted not from the work of one lone genius, but from collaboration of a team with complementary skills. Managers should build teams with the ideal mix of traits to form a creative group and then establish the conditions that make creativity much more likely to occur.
Communication is defined as the process of meaningful interaction between two or more persons with a view to arriving at a common meaning and understanding. There are different types of communication and these are used on different occasions. In this section on communication skills, Technofunc will equip you with the skills most needed in today’s dynamic, demanding workplace.
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