Decisions made at the strategic management level tend to be more
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The essence of management is making decisions. Managers are constantly required to evaluate alternatives and make decisions regarding a wide range of matters. Just as there are different managerial styles, there are different decision-making styles. Decision making involves uncertainty and risk, and decision makers have varying degrees of risk aversion. Decision making also involves qualitative and quantitative analyses, and some decision makers prefer one form of analysis over the other. Decision making can be affected not only by rational judgment, but also by nonrational factors such as the personality of the decision maker, peer pressure, the organizational situation, and others.
Management guru Peter F. Drucker, as quoted in Association Management, identified eight "critically important" decision-making practices that successful executives follow. Each:
Ask "What needs to be done?"
Ask "What is right for the enterprise?"
Develop action plans
Take responsibility for decisions
Take responsibility for communicating
Focus on opportunities rather than problems
Run productive meetings
Think and say "we" rather than "I"
POSING THE PROBLEM CORRECTLY
According to Ralph L. Keeney, professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and co-author of Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions,managers commonly consider too few alternatives when making difficult decisions. When approaching a problem, decision makers need to regularly consider, starting at the outset, "Is this what I really need to decide?" In addition, the nature of the problem may change during the decision-making process, as either the situation changes or the decision maker's insights into the situation change.
By not formulating the problem correctly, decision makers risk missing a whole range of other alternatives. Decision makers can improve the chances of asking the right question by probing objectives, goals, interests, fears, and aspirations. They also need to consider very carefully the consequences of each alternative. They can devise new alternatives through brainstorming and imagining as many options as possible, keeping in mind objectives, but not necessarily being entirely practical at first. In practice, action-oriented decision makers tend to focus on solutions without considering whether they are working on the right problem. Instead of choosing from decisions selected by others