Management Information |
Burger on a Bun Decision Making
When approaching any decision, it's important for individuals to maintain the healthy state of openness called for by WYSINWYG (what you see is never what you get). Remember that there is always more going on than simply meets the eye. Calling on all the skills, strengths and resources that are accessible, though not immediately apparent will produce vastly better results. Secondly, individuals should strive for balance in both their data gathering and their decision-making. Many factors can influence a final decision, not the least of which is emotion. Strong emotion easily clouds the process and can result in extreme solutions. Sometimes extreme measures will be called for, but generally they are not. Decisions that weigh both objective and subjective data and strike an effective balance are likely to succeed. Finally: keep it simple. Begin with what you know. Reduce the complex to the direct. Set clear goals and implement straightforward plans. Whether making decisions as an individual or as a team, the three principles provide the foundation for creating effective solutions. In order to make a decision we first gather information and then make judgements about that information. This is true whether we are making personal or team decisions. But team decision-making is definitely more complex. For one thing, seven people on a team will initially bring seven different points of view as well as senses of priority, commitment and urgency. These and other complexities require that teams pay careful attention to the three-part structure of a team decision. Let's start with the actual decision point. A wide range of data has been gathered and both objectively and subjectively analyzed. It's time to choose, and you do. Is that it? Has the decision been reached? Can we go home now? Not yet. The decision point is really just the burger on the bun. It's literally sandwiched between two equally important elements in the process of reaching a final decision. The decision point is always preceded by your first impressions. These impressions derive from your data gathering and from your previous experience with the subject. Often first impressions will determine the outcome of your final decision because they'll shape how you assemble and analyze the information to begin with. Next element in the anatomy of a decision is the decision point itself and is produced as the result of active discussion. This is the culminating point of your efforts. It may occur entirely in your own mind for a personal decision or in a team's primary forum, the meeting. Meetings are an incredibly dynamic forum and reflect WYSINWYG and Chaos at their utmost. They are WYSINWYG in that more is always going on than meets the eye and chaotic in that there are profound behavioral paradigms active just out of sight. The final element of the anatomy is second thoughts. Second thoughts refer to the ideas, attitudes and opinions that you have following the decision point. Just because you've reached a decision doesn't mean you'll stick to it. Second thoughts run from, "I wish I'd said?" to the notorious "buyer's remorse." The extent to which first impressions and active discussion are effectively managed will determine the magnitude of second thoughts. The good news is that each of these three elements can be managed. When the underlying paradigms are recognized and employed as decision-making assets, extraordinary results will follow. George Ebert is the President of Trinity River Seminars and Consulting, a firm specializing in the custom design and delivery of team building, personal growth and ethical development programs. Mr. Ebert is a highly sought after speaker, educator and consultant with over thirty years experience in both the public and private sectors. He has presented widely throughout the Unites States. He is the author of the management cult classic, Climbing From the Fifth Station: A guide to building teams that work!
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Motivating For Higher Performance Employee motivation is probably the most important single manageable factor for success and profitability of all the facets of specialty store retailing. It is too vital to be handled on a hit or miss basis, depending on the whim or spirit that stirs the store owner or manager from time to time. Increasing the Return on Your Training Investment Insightful leaders and organizations recognize that training is a valuable tool for personal and professional development and therefore set some sort of an annual training budget.Most everyone I've ever talked to has been to both excellent training (hopefully ours!) and training that was, well, not so good. Does Your State Like To Keep Your Workers Compensation Secrets Hidden? Workers compensation secrets are hidden deep within piles and piles of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. They are sometimes used as high priced paper weights for over worked government workers who may or may not be totally interested in seeing that you find the exact information that you are looking for. 6 Steps to Effective Communication Effective leaders are known for being excellent communicators. Here's what to do. Hiring a Book Keeping Service Whether you choose to do your own books and accounting or hire those services out there are a few things you should know first.A good book keeping service will normally charge you around $200 -500 per month while you are still somewhat small and you can receive: Profit and Loss Statements; Balance Sheets; Bill Paying Services; Checking Account Reconciliation; Journal Reconciliation; Tax Information Preparation; Tax Return Filing; Etc. Creativity and Innovation Management: The Value Of Due Diligence Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation. There are other useful definitions, for example, creativity can be measured according to the number of ideas produced, the diversity of those ideas and the novelty of those ideas. Managing Workplace Conflicts Kinds of Workplace ConflictsLet's start by identifying where conflicts happen. Think about the kinds of conflicts that happen around your workplace. What Every Manager Should Know About How to Maximize the Two People Inside Every one of us, in reality, has two people inside: The person we are today and the person we can become tomorrow and in the future.We go to work every day, are never late or absent, earn a promotion; and receive occasional raises. Internal Prisons: The Thief of Productivity and Quality in our Workforce As a professional speaker, one of my biggest challenges is to grab the attention of my audience within the first few minutes of the presentation- grab them by the throat if you will. I do this by coming out in a suite and tie, following an introduction in which I have been described as a recent college graduate who earned both of his degrees with a 4. The Seven Cs: Partnership Danger Signs - Competitive, Not Complementary Action A series of articles exploring the seven critical areas that can indicate a partnership is in trouble.Competitive, Not Complementary ActionJames Carville and Mary Matlin are public relations spokespeople for the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Are You Cascading Your Strategy, or Fragmenting It? INTRODUCTIONThe typical approach executive teams use to cascade, or roll out, their strategic direction is to produce a clear set of goals, objectives, critical success factors or a scorecard and then get each departmental or functional manager to take this on board and customize it for their part of the organisation. The trouble then begins?A TYPICAL APPROACH: EACH DEPARTMENT ADOPTS OR ADAPTS A VERSION OF THE CORPORATE STRATEGYThe first phase of most organisational planning processes is that the organisation's executives design and express a strategic direction using a framework of some kind. Strategies for Planning and Conducting Effective Meetings Did you know that business executives spend about half their time sitting in meetings? In fact, 40 to 50 percent of their working hours are consumed by meetings, according to a study by the Annenberg School of Communications at UCLA and the University of Minnesota's Training & Development Research Center.Meetings are inevitable - whether you're a business executive or member of a volunteer, social, or civic organization. ISO 9001 and Total Quality Management Total Quality ManagementTotal Quality Management, or TQM, has become one of the most frequently discussed topics in current business literature. Because of the competitive pressures created by Japanese companies, quality became a competitive weapon in the 1980s in most industries. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Boot Camp Service Level Agreements, or "SLA's" are tricky but useful mechanisms for managing the risk of an on-going relationship with IT service providers. Unfortunately, most SLA's that show up in service contracts as worthless, cosmetic paper additions. Lets Flourish and Prosper! Some say that in business as in sex: if it is good, it's great and if it is bad it's still pretty good. This does not happen to be true. How to Set Up a Conference Call The methods in which you set up a conference call vary between the different services you use, and what type of conference calling you are using. There are three main types of conference calls, all with different methods of set up. ISO 9001 What Records Does My Business Need To Keep? Which documents must I keep for ISO 9001?In addition to the legislative requirement for your business to keep certain records ISO 9001 2000 requires your business to retain other records to demonstrate compliance with its various clauses.From an ISO 9001 2000 viewpoint records are documents generated whilst operating your Quality Management System. Importance of Just-In-Time Inventory System In today's competitive world shorter product life cycles, customers rapid demands and quickly changing business environment is putting lot of pressures on manufacturers for quicker response and shorter cycle times. Now the manufacturers put pressures on their suppliers. Interviewing Candidates: 3 Ways to Avoid Snap Judgments Have you ever hired the wrong person? If so, perhaps you are an emotional interviewer?An emotional interviewer tends to make judgments on first impressions. In a matter of minutes, an emotional interviewer may decide if someone is competent or not. Bringing Ideas to Life: Seven Principles for Pulling Together You're so excited you're practically bouncing off the walls. This idea-your best ever-is not only going to save the company tens of thousands of dollars this year, it's eventually going to be a moneymaker. |
home | site map | contact us |