Decision making

Decision Making

Decision-making is an integral part of modern management. Essentially, rational or sound decision making is taken as primary function of management. Every manage takes hundreds and hundreds of decisions subconsciously or consciously making it as the key component in the role of a manager.

Decisions play important roles as they determine both organizational and managerial activities. A decision can be defined as a course of action purposely chosen from a set of alternative to achieve organizational or managerial objectives or goals. Decision making process is continuous and indispensable component of managing ay organization or business activities. Decisions are made to sustain the activities of all business and organizational functioning.

Decisions are made at every level of management to ensure organizational or business goals are achieve. Further the decisions make up one of core functional values that every organization adopts and implements to ensure optimum growth and drivability in terms of services and or products offered.

A lot of time is consumed while decisions are taken. In a management setting, decision cannot be taken abruptly. It should follow the steps such as

1.       Defining the problem

2.       Gathering information and collecting data Developing and weighing the options

3.       Choosing best possible option

4.       Plan and execute

5.       Take follow

Since decision making process follows the above sequential steps, a lot of time is spent in this process. This is the case with every decision taken to solve management and administrative problems in a business setting. Though the whole process is time consuming, the result of such process in a professional organization is magnanimous.

Process of decision making decision making process is like a school exam. Those who take good decision will pass the exam and the rest who does not take right decisions will have to bear the consequences. Being able to take good decision is important for everyone, whether he/she is a student, teacher, manager, principal, president, leader of any institution, etc. A student has to take decision about his career, a president has to take decisions regarding his country’s benefit, and a manager has to take decisions regarding his company and likewise the leader of any institution. So every single person has to pass this step in order to progress in their fields.

The meaning of decision in Latin is to ‘cut off’. This means that from all the available alternatives you choose one thing and then cut off from all the other alternatives. Due to this, the decision making process sometimes becomes very difficult. Choosing the right option from all the alternatives is very hard to do.

Decision making process requires thinking process, time, efforts, resources and also a little bit of knowledge and past experiences. Thinking process plays an important role in decision making process because it allows you to judge each and every thing. Timing is also important.

Taking right decisions on right time can save you from any trouble. Taking too little time to take decisions or taking too much time to execute your decision can cause many problems for you. Decision making processes also requires knowledge, experiences, and research. If you have knowledge, you can find out different alternatives for the problem faced. Making decisions without having proper knowledge about the problem can cause difficulties.

In our view decision making power is the key to progress in life. You might have seen many people who do not take proper decisions and then they have to suffer. On the other hand people who have this decision making power continues to progress in their life. Not all of us have this decision making power. We try to make right decisions but sometimes we make mistakes because we don’t know the steps that we should follow during the decision making process. So in order to take right decisions, it is important that we should know all the steps of decisions making process and follow them.

The decision making process involves the following steps:

1.       Curious observation

2.       Existence of problem

3.       Goals and planning

4.       Search, Explore & gather the Evidence

5.       Generate creative and logical alternative solutions

6.       Evaluate the evidence

7.       Make the educated guess (hypothesis)

8.       Challenge the hypothesis

9.       Reach a conclusion

10.   Suspend judgment

11.   Take action