Introduction
Organizations have to make decisions based on their needs and wants. These decisions determine how, what, when, and who is to perform certain roles concerning the intended and desired results to achieve an organization’s set goals, targets, and objectives. A process that can be easily implemented is necessary where the decisions are made by more than one unit of an organization to be uniformity and cohesion (Figueiredo & Adami, 2017). Thus, the process of making a decision must be precise to yield the best results.
Decision-Making Steps
Understanding the decision to be made.
This is the first step; organizations must have a realization as to why a decision is necessary. This is where decision-makers have to identify and define the type of decision that needs to be made and how it affects the work process or improves a product or a service (Dartmouth, 2020).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Gathering all the crucial information
The second step encompasses gathering the necessary information or data, as the case may be, to know how best to respond to customers’ needs. This information or data could be either from internal or external sources of the organization. They then analyze that information to its desired usage.
Identifying other alternatives
The third step entails developing some different options regarding the decision managers have to make. Sometimes, one may decide on alternatives as they may be the better and wiser options. It is important to see which alternative is more feasible and can be adapted easily to all in an organization’s benefits.
Evaluation of the pros and cons
The fourth step will involve an accurate and sound evaluation of all the alternatives to identify those that may be costlier and or not easy to implement. This entails weighing all the options and forecasting other options’ outcomes, including their implementation costs, to eliminate those with barriers depending on their effectiveness and efficiency (Dartmouth, 2020). At this stage, consultations with other key members of an organization are vital.
Selecting the best decision or alternative
You have analyzed all the pros and cons and consulted widely with other relevant stakeholders in an organization, sometimes even in consultation with outside professionals. At this point, it is very important to have alternatives A, B, and C.
Making the decision
This is the stage where you realize that you need to make the decision and make. The decision selected here must be the most beneficial to all organization members and places the organization in its best interests and puts it into action.
Evaluating the decision
After some time has passed, it is very important to evaluate, to see how the decision that was made is effective and efficient or not (Dartmouth, 2020). Suppose it has resolved the problem or achieved the desired results. If it has not achieved what was desired of it, it is time to look for alternative B or C, by again, repeating the whole decision-making process.
It is highly reasonable to consider all the decision-making steps to remove any sense of doubts and have confidence while investing and idea and putting your money and energy onto it. This ensures a viable plan to invest and grows the company and ensures its long-term success.
Figure 1: 7 Steps to Effective Decision Making ( Dartmouth, 2020).
Analysis
The progressive approach is a decision-making analysis that is widely used. It involves hiring an expert with analytical skills to determined effective models of predicting the expected result. In this model, an organization should determine the key variables that relate to the known operational issue. For instance, an organization should employ the number of working hours and fixed overtime incentives information while determining ways of increasing overall production. Therefore, the expected production will be represented by a statistical model as follow;
a+bx=y
where,
a= fixed overtime incentive
b=number of employees working hour
x=marginal change in production.
Y = Expected production.
Example
An example of a decision-making process is when an organization wants to roll out a new product line. This process will involve research where a certain company will have identified a market gap about a product and decide to solve the problem and provide that particular product to the customers. That company will have to have conducted a feasibility study to identify the gap, hence the opportunity. The company gathers all the necessary information regarding the product and its alternatives existing in the market. The company realizes that there is indeed a chance or a loophole to penetrate the market; it then weighs in all production factors. This is what Coca-Cola used when it decided to be selling bottled mineral water. They saw a gap in the market, they seized the opportunity, considering all other market players water of sale and other market factors, decided amongst the alternatives, took the action of promulgating the new product labeled as “Dasani” which was fresh bottled water and entered into the market (Foodbev.com, 2019).
Conclusion
Therefore, organizations should leverage the decision-making step for operational analysis. Identification steps enable managers to determine common operational issues. The information-gathering step helps determine actual operational issues while proposing alternatives, and evaluating alternatives steps helps an organization select the most economical and risk-free model. Implementation and control steps are used to actualize and monitor model performance, respectively. To increase decision making-steps efficiency, an organization leverages statistical model-Progressive approach analysis.
References
Dartmouth, U. of M.(2020). Decision-making process . https://www.umassd.edu/fycm/decision making/process/.
Figueiredo, F. W. D. S., & Adami, F. (2017). Steps for the decision making based on the statistical analyses. Journal of Human Growth and Development , 27 (3), 350-352.
Foodbev.com, 2019. Coca-Cola to launch Dasani water in aluminium cans and bottles. https://www.foodbev.com/news/coca-cola-to-launch-dasani-water-in-aluminium-cans-and-bottles
Sampson Quain, 2019. The Decision-Making Process in an Organization. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/decisionmaking-process-organization-21532.html
