Decision Making Process 2

In the last byte, we began our discussion on decision making process and classified the decisions into 2 types. In today's byte, we look at the various steps involved in a decision making process.

The decision making process could be summarized in the following diagram (adapted from the reference book):

The first step in a decision making process is that of recognizing the problem. The other way of looking at this is it is the point when the manager realizes that he/she has to make the decision in the context. It is important to identify the real problem else it is very possible that any action taken would not fix the real underlying reason - it would only be treating the symptoms and that is more life firefighting than the root cause fixation.

The second step in the process is for the manager to indentify the objective with which the decision is to be made - that is, the manager should determine what needs to be accomplished through the decision.

We shall continue the discussion on the other steps in the next byte.