Decision making

Introduction:

All people must make decisions in the different areas of our daily life, and that can be, to a greater or lesser extent, easy or difficult, depending on the consequences that one or the other entails, having to choose the one that we consider most appropriate among the different options that we have.

Decision making is an essential competence in leadership since the future of the company in one way or another will depend on the decision made by the leader. We no longer speak only of economic impacts, but also, for instance, about tasks to be carried out by one or another worker, organization of teams seeking the complementarity of job profiles etc.

Many leaders find it difficult to determine the best option to execute, sometimes out of fear, other times due to lack of confidence, or the simple fact of not having fully defined all possible options.

Once this lesson is completed and approved, learners will be able to:

1. Understand what is a decision-making process.
2. Apply the main steps of the decision-making process.

In this lesson, we will learn why decision making should be developed as an intentional process defined by rules and steps to be followed to take wise and informed decisions.

Benefits of creating a decision-making process:

• Good-reasoned and good-quality decisions.
• The opportunity for growth.
• More alternatives to be considered.
• Increase of the knowledge about the decision topic, due to the investigation, made.
• More abilities for research.
• Possibility of new actions and resources to be put in use.
• Lower influence of impulsiveness and emotional responses.

How to lead good decision-making:

• Define well the problem to be solved.

It is necessary to determine what the situation is, what is sought, what are the indicators to be improved, etc. If the problem is not well defined from the beginning, the solution will clearly not be what is needed. Let us say for instance that your problem is the lack of outcome of a specific product.

• Collect all the information

For a leader it is essential to collect information from various sources and see the situation from different points of view, having to count on the collaboration of his team. Check background, figures, complementary situations, etc. They will make the difference between a good or a disastrous decision. Following our previous example, what are the reasons why people don’t buy this product? Ask opinion from your team, from customers, from experts.

• Analyse the information

The information is only letters and numbers if it does not have an analysis process, so a study of the variables at stake must be generated from all the information collected. Can you find common statements among the information collected?

• Creation of the different action options

Change the place of the product in your shop, lower the price, change the product itself… All of them must have viability according to the study carried out.

• Decide what you consider the best of all

It is the last operation. It is only after completing all the previous steps when you choose one or the other option. The said decision must be made based on the mission and vision of the Company, its policies, code of ethics, culture and all the factors that emotionally or intellectually make the difference.

Conclusion

Successful projects start with good decisions taken at the right moment. For this, it is important to go step by step, involving teams for important decisions, and to collect preliminary information so as to have a solid basis and assumption about the consequences of the different solutions proposed. We invite you to refer to our course on Testing Business ideas (module III) to learn more about hypothesis and testing.

Here you have the contents of the lesson in PDF: