Decision-Making Process: Improving Our Ability to Make Decision Facing a situation, you have to decide. For example, the fire surrounds you: What do you do? Jump through the windows and risk to kill yourself or to wait the firemen and risk to be burned to death if they come to late? Every decision that we make or don’t make shapes our future. Everyone tries to make good decisions. However, it is easy to overlook an important factor, miss a desirable option, or base the decision on unreliable information. In addition, fear of making a wrong choice can cause someone to postpone decisions, leading to miss opportunities. A businessperson must have the ability to make decisions under the pressure of time and circumstances. This ability needs a good knowledge of the decision making process. From a practical point-of-view, of the most important human skills is decision-making. Both at a personal level and in context of organizations, decision-making skill strongly affects the quality of life and success. Decision-making is the process by which a person or group recognizes a choice, gathers information, analyzes the data, and determines the best option to choose. The decision-making process employs high levels of critical thinking skills and problem-solving techniques. Decisions are guided by several factors, primarily the significance of the issue, the impact the decision may have, and the person's or group's morals and cultural norms. For less significant decisions that have little impact, people might not invoke the higher thinking skills that theorists expect (Decision-Making 2015). Flipping a coin, hoping for a miraculous sign, following the crowd, or by passing the responsibility to someone else are all means of making decisions. For more important decisions with greater impact, people often employ more advanced thought processes like those demonstrated in decision-making models by social psychologists and behaviorists. Most theories accept the idea that decision-making consists of a number of steps or stages such as improving creativity, critical thinking skills, and problem solving techniques. It is well recognized that routine cognitive processes such as memory, reasoning, and concept formation play a primary role in decision-making (Decision-Making 2015). Leaders know in their gut that creativity and innovation are the life blood of their o... ... middle of paper ... ...d are seldom subject to critical review. As a result, managers frequently have a difficult time improving their decision-making capacity. Good business decisions are the heart of a successful organization. Without a process decisions may be made by the most powerful or influential person in the group or not made at all. Good decision-making is a balance between getting the most of what we want with as little risk as possible. It means that we include the right people and use a process that encourages participation while keeping or focus clearly on the decision at hand. This allows people to make the decision with a high degree of confidence and efficiency. Works Cited: Critical Thinking Skills. (2015). Web. March 7, 2015 http://www.everesttraining.com Decision-Making. (2015). Web. March 7, 2015 http://tip.psychology.org/decision Problem Solving and Decision Making. (2015). Web. March 8, 2015 http://www.cob.tamucc.edu/rallen/ Tubbs, S.L. (2004) A Systems Approach to Small Group Interaction. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Corporation. Welch, D. (2001). Decisions, Decisions: The Art of Effective Decision Making New York State. Prometheus Books.
In everyday real life situations, one keeps on making various decisions depending on a number of factors. Thus, decision-making is an integral tool in human life, and one cannot avoid it. In view of this, experts report that individuals make use of varying decision-making models to arrive at a decision that suits them. Here, the writer presents four decision-making models, namely the classical, behavioral, satisficing, and optimizing models.
Before starting this reading assignment I never thought to question why I make the decisions I do in such a short amount of time. After reading Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, written by Malcolm Gladwell I have a better understanding of how we as individuals perceive and react to information. This book provides insight on how to critically asses and understand the way our minds operate on a deeper level. The book consists of 6 chapters, each providing insight on how the decision making process works and how it affects what we do with every second of the day. Throughout each chapter there are subsections with personal stories, case studies, or examples that help provide an alternative view on how the decision making process is carried out under normal circumstances.
Each decision-making strategy has advantages and disadvantages and none are always better than the others. An effective team leader will consider the options and determine which strategy is the most appropriate one for the issues to be decided and the circumstances in which the decision is to be made and implemented. Outcome-oriented businesses need leaders skilled at decision-making. Decision-making styles are neither good nor bad. The effectiveness of any decision-making style depends on the situation in which it is used. Performance is enhanced by integrating all styles, by finding the style that works best in particular project, or by being able to move intentionally from one decision-making style to another.
Life is full of decisions. Some decisions are trivial. Should I choose paper or plastic at the grocery store? Which of the 31 flavors of ice cream should I pick? Other decisions are vital. Should I get married to her or should I take this new job? Your decisions may affect many people or only yourself. In this paper I will present a decision-making model. I will describe a decision that I made at work using this model and how critical thinking impacted that decision.
Decision making can be involved in every situation we experience, even when deciding what to eat for lunch. People and companies are surrounded by countless decisions on a daily basis. Decisions can be contemplated in different ways from different perspectives. By definition, decision-making is the selection of a procedure to weight alternatives and find a solution to a problem. Needless to say, certain situations may require various decision making styles in order to provide effectiveness. A decision-making style is defined as how an individual perceives and comprehends stimuli and the general manner in which he or she chooses to respond to such information. A model of decision-making styles developed by a group of researchers determines that
Making Decisions We all make decisions of varying importance every day, so the idea that decision making can be a rather sophisticated art may at first seem strange. However, studies have shown that most people are much poorer at decision making than they think. An understanding of what decision making involves, together with a few effective techniques, will help produce better decisions.
It does not matter what company you work for or what career path you choose you have to have a standard way of making decisions. Decision making can be identified as the thought process which results in the selection of a course of action among numerous alternative scenarios (Pennino, 2002). Each decision making process generates a final choice that may or may not bring about action. For that reason, decision making process is the majority critical process in any organization. Decision making is one of the most important activities of management and is an enormous part of any process of implementation. In the decision making process, one course of action is selected from little possible alternatives. In the process of decision making, many
The more complicated a decision-making process is, the more unknowns we are dealing with, requiring us to make more assumptions and estimates, leading us to frame questions in potentially different ways, requiring the inputs of several different people. Each one of these steps are prone to the psychological biases and traps outlined earlier and can cause a decision-maker that isn’t aware of the psychological pitfalls to subconsciously make a poor
Blenko, M. W., Mankins, M. C., Rogers, P. (2010). The decision-driven organization. Harvard Business Review, 88(6), 54-62
People are put in situations everyday where they are required to make a decision whether they are aware of it or not; it is understandable how one can make a decision and not even think twice about it seeing how most decisions made almost seem like second nature such as eating or going to sleep. Depending on how complex the decision being made it dictates the length of the decision making process. Some of the more complex choices people are faced with may require more thought than others, and depending on the severity of it the decision made can have long lasting effects whether it be positive or negative. Those requiring little thought do not have as much importance as far as the final outcome goes. There are more factors that are a part of
Thinking critically and making decisions are important parts of today’s business environment. It is important to understand how the decision making process works and the steps involved. The nine steps of the decision making process are: identifying the problem, defining criteria, setting goals and objectives, evaluating the effect of the problem, identifying the causes of the problem, framing alternatives, evaluating impacts of the alternatives, making the decision, implementing the decision, and measuring the impacts. (Decision, 2007.) By using various methods and tools to assist in making important business decisions an individual can ensure the decisions they make will be as successful as possible. In this paper it will be examined how the decision making process can be followed using various tools and techniques to make successful business decisions by using these same tools and techniques during a thinking critically business scenario. The paper will also discuss how different tools and techniques could have been used to make different, yet still successful decisions.
In a moment an unwise choice can completely derail your best developed goals or rather a wise decision can get you out of the murkiest of situations with ease. Now making a choice comes with responsibilities. The choices you make will affect not only you but also the people around you. At a personal level the things which drive our decisions are our emotions, our memories and our reasoning. At an organisational level it is always weighed according to the pros and cons of the decision.
A decision is a solution chosen from among alternatives. Decisions must be made when a person is faced with a problem or an issue that needs resolution. Decision-making is the process of selecting a course of action (ideas or alternatives) that will solve a problem and resolve any issues. Decision-making models provide people with a method for making decisions. There are numerous decision-making methods people utilize today. Some are meant to be all encompassing, meaning they can be utilized in many different environments. Others are specific to issues or industries, such as technology, psychology, and mathematics. Regardless of the problem, there is usually a decision-making process that is best suited for any situation, and it is up to us to find it.
Making decisions is an important part of our everyday life. Decisions define actions and lead to the achievement of goals. However, these depend on the effectiveness of the decision-making process. An effective decision is free from biases, uncertainties, and is deeply dependent on information and critical thinking. Poor decisions lead to the inability to achieve set objectives and could lead to losses, if finance is a factor. Therefore, it is important to contemplate about quality and ways to achieve it in decision-making, which is the focus of this paper. The purpose is to look into the needs of decision-making, including what one should do and what one should not do.
Decision-making is one of life’s most important responsibilities. This is what makes life on going. There are things that make a person unique from one another. The ability to make decision based on what a person observes is what