As a manager, a person is supposed to make decisions that will address important issues in day to day operations through strategic planning. One needs to have prior knowledge of their organization’s business objectives, mission, and vision so that they can align their decisions to achieve these statements. The responsibility of such a leader lies in their ability to identify operational, administrative, and marketing challenges so that the can develop appropriate strategies to address them. A manager must recognize decisions that promote actions within their organization. This means that critical choices must be made regarding the policies, budgets, programs, and procedures. Effective decision making involves the exploitation of critical resources such as information, personnel, time, supplies, and equipment to address a particular problem ( Haines, 2016 ). An important practice of this process involves choosing the best alternatives against a given criteria. One needs to identify the costs, benefits, strengths, and weaknesses so that they can make their decision based on this criteria. In the long run, a manager will be able to use these skills to make decisions that will increase profitability and improve the performance of their organization.
Contingency planning is a very important part of an organization’ framework. The leadership position of a manager requires them to identify all the possible events that may disrupt the daily business operations. Critical thinking is a very crucial attribute in this process because it requires one to evaluate key operations and their risks so that they can develop a comprehensive plan that will minimize the loss and damage if they occur ( Strang, Korstanje & Vajjhala, 2018 ). Risk analysis must be conducted for the purpose of identifying the risk factors that may face the business. At the end of the day, one should develop a list where all the potential threats are prioritized in order of their probability of occurrence and impact on business operations. An outline of the steps that should be taken once a risk occurs must be outlined. Managers also need to train personnel on the actions and duties to execute so that they can get the operations back on track. Critical thinking is, therefore, very important in this case because, with these skills, a manager is able to develop a progressive contingency plan for their organization.
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Applying creativity to the decision-making process is hindered by lack of clear goals and objectives to guide an organization ( Haines, 2016 ). Working for an organization where the management does not have a clear picture of what needs to be achieved will act as a roadblock to inventiveness because one will not be able to develop ideas and insights on how to improve the productivity of a firm. In addition to this, fear of failure is also likely to obstruct creativity because some individuals within the organization do not want to make a mistake or take a risk for their organization. If an organization has fear of what might happen in the future, it may discourage creativity and innovation in the workplace because it does not want to implement strategies that may bring losses. Fear of criticism may also be considered a direct roadblock to innovative skills. Teams that are afraid to sell themselves or their business ideas to others will either lack creativity or discourage it within their organization. They need to overlook rejection and criticism because they will never be able to achieve long-term goals by playing it safe and settling for less.
In any organization, there are always some business settings that will require a manager to develop a contingency plan. For instance, departments that handle crucial client data and other important information such as online transactions may be prone to risks such as cyber-attacks. In this case, one needs to develop a detailed outline of how the company plans to react if such an event occurs. Loss of crucial data may be detrimental to the credibility and operation of an organization, especially if it loses financial data and client information ( Strang, Korstanje & Vajjhala, 2018 ). There is, therefore, need for one to be prepared in such a setting because some departments serve as the core of a firms operations. There are also other areas that may require contingency planning because they may affect the productivity. In such a case, one is supposed to be ready for such an event so that they can respond in a manner that will enable their organization to resume normal operations without any challenges.
Contingency planning requires a manager to analyze the risks that a firm is likely to face. The length of the list will be determined by the type of business operations that are run on a day to day basis. Next, the likelihood of the events and the corresponding impact of their occurrence are outlined as a means of weighing on the extent of damage that may befall an organization. This step requires the information to be displayed in a graph or table so that it becomes easy for a manager to present a clear illustration of the risks and their outcomes. Depending on the impact or harm to the business, the risks need to be organized in order of their priority. This means that the ones that will cause the most extensive damage will be on top of the list whereas the ones with the least harm will be at the bottom.
A contingency plan needs to be developed based on the criticality of these events. After this has been done, a process needs to be outlined for each risk. All the procedures and actions that need to be conducted, as well as the resources that will be used, need to be outlined in this step. Employees should be trained so that if such an event occurs, they will be ready to execute the backup plan. Having an emergency procedure for every event will help to minimize the extent of the damage that is likely to occur ( Strang, Korstanje & Vajjhala, 2018 ). This will enable an organization to operate without fear of an attack or risk because it has a multifaceted contingency plan that covers all the crucial parts of daily operations. The plan also needs to be tested so that its effectiveness can be measured. For instance, fire risk simulations or earthquake drills may be conducted as a means of evaluating the responsiveness of the backup systems and employee reaction. The areas that need to be improved on can be identified based on these assessments, thus eliminating any loopholes that may obstruct recovery operations.
References
Haines, S. (2016). The systems thinking approach to strategic planning and management . Florida: CRC Press.
Strang, K. D., Korstanje, M. E., & Vajjhala, N. (Eds.). (2018). Research, Practices, and Innovations in Global Risk and Contingency Management . IGI Global.
