The 3 Pillars for Good Managerial Decision-Making
by Joan Marques
Published on this site: June 12th, 2004
Decision-making: a point that is crucial to good management. And
one that should be approached with care, as it involves great risks.
For let’s be
honest: it would be wonderful to have all the information at hand
when you have to make a decision, wouldn’t it? However, 9 times
out of 10 it doesn’t work that way! We have to make almost
all our decisions based on incomplete information.
One of the things you have to be sure about is that before making
a decision you really understand the problem or opportunity at hand.
You should also make sure that you are comfortable choosing from
the options you have. If not, you may want to consider waiting a
while…unless the waiting will eliminate some very good options!
You probably already see it: decision-making is a delicate matter.
Aside from all the attention points mentioned above, there are 3
points you may want to focus on when facing decisions:
- Know when you, as the manager, can afford to put together a
team in a decision-making process, and when not. Teams can be
great and provide depth in the quality of a solution, but they’re
also time consuming and they can give way to many other hurdles
such as hidden agenda’s, overpowering from members who have
more authority than others, or groupthink, which is when a team
becomes so self-assured that it doesn’t care about the quality
of the decision anymore, because it regards itself flawless.
- Know your personality if the decision is up to you. There are
managers who only focus on the task, and there are managers who
only focus on the people involved in the decision. And in between
you have various gradations.
By knowing what type of a decision-maker you are, you can try
to expand your view or involve one or more people with the skills
you run short in.
- Beware of the most common decision traps! What that all boils
down to is the fact that you should never make a decision based
on a single event, an initial figure, or a narrow base of information,
and you should never get so involved in a decision making process
that you stubbornly cling to a decision long after you found out
that it won’t work.
Decision-making is one of a manager’s steady tasks, but it
also surfaces every day of your life: sometimes in more complicated
issues than others. Mastering the basics of decision-making can
therefore be a valuable asset to the way you handle simple as well
as complicated matters in your life.
Dr. Joan Marques, Burbank, CA, 06/11/04
Joan Marques emigrated from Suriname, South America, to California,
U.S., in 1998. She holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership,
a Master’s in Business Administration, and is currently a university
instructor in Business and Management in Burbank, California. You
may visit her web sites at http://www.joanmarques.com
and http://www.spiritcounts.com.
Joan's manual "Feel Good About Yourself," a six part series
to get you over the bumps in life and onto success, can be purchased
and downloaded at:
http://www.non-books.com/FeelGoodSeries.html.
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