Management
Planning is deciding in advance what to do, which have to it and how it should be done. It stands as a bridge between where the organization is and where the organization wants to go. It can also say that decision-making is a process to achieve the desired future, taking into account the current situation and the internal and external factors that may influence the objectives achievement.
Planning involves a process of decision-making, a process of anticipation, visualization (representation of the desired future) and execution (take action to achieve the future concept). Every plan has two characteristics: it must refer to the future first and must indicate necessary steps to achieve the future.
It is for this reason that has arisen through the history of management, qualitative and quantitative technics that allow the efficient development of the planning process. One of the techniques used for operations planning is forecasts and projections.
Dan Ariely in his talks in Monterrey, California (1998) shows how a wrong perspective of the viewer may result in bad decisions and a chain of mistakes. The table and Rubick Cube examples show how a wrong perspective may result in bad decisions for the viewer. The other example showed by Dan Ariely results in the available options for the person and how it may affect the decision making. In a three options scenario, when two options have similarities, the person will choose the better option of the two similar options (Economist.com example). Sheena Iyengar highlights the art of choosing considering the cultural background as the most important drivers of the decision-making and how it affects the performance in the personal life and organizations. She developed the example of two groups of kids from the United States of America and Japan. The kids were divided into three experiments: free rules, teacher, and mother. The kids from the United States of America had better performance that Japanese in the free group. The kids from Japan had better performance than the USA in the mother group. The test demonstrated how the cultural background affects decision making and performance.
Amy Webb gives a speech about its experience about hacking the online dating creating her system and under her rules, an experience that is useful for the decision making.
After considering different talks from Dan Ariely, Amy Webb and Sheena Iyengar, there are in summary of the elements that must be considered in the decision making and planning:
■ Obtaining a "right" solution consist in a solution that fully meets the specifications previous to paying attention to the necessary concessions to make.
■ The inclusion in the decision and action. It is necessary to include in the decision-making to the most valuable people that can contribute to their experience and knowledge.
■ A decision is a judgment and, as such, is rarely a choice between right and wrong. In the best case, it is a choice between "almost right" and "almost wrong." Under another perspective, the decision-making process needs to consider the least wrong path, when the two or more possible decision brings new problems and challenges.
Obviously, decisions involve a compromise, but cannot always follow a particular set of steps to reach "nearly right" conclusions. The reason is that almost all decisions have a unique character, which determines conditions and a special solution for each case.
Works Cited
Ariely, Dan. Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our decisions? 19 May 2009. 26 July 2016.
Iyengar, Sheena. Sheena Iyengar: The art of choosing. 26 July 2010. 26 July 2016.
Webb, Amy. Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating. 02 October 2013. 26 July 2016.
