Decision making is one of the most vital activities that take place in any institution, company or any organizational setting. One of the most important aspects to consider concerning decision making is the fact that the consequent activities and results that will arise in the company, organization or institution from the time the decision is made henceforth will be directly or indirectly affected by the ruling that has been passed prior to the activity’s implementation. For this reason therefore, every decision made in any company regardless of how major or minor it is should be understood to have a lot of impact of the organization or institution’s settings and activities in future. Decision making basically includes the conscious and cognitive mental processes that take place when selecting the best viable option out of several alternatives. Different leaders have different ways of selecting the most desirable option out of the many available ones, and this is in fact one of the aspects that is used to differentiate between leaders, based on their decision making abilities and how efficient they are in selection of the best choice for a company, organization or institution (Hammond & Keeney, 2002, p. 13).
When newly hired into high positions in any company, most managers and leaders are thought to have poor decision making capabilities and in fact in many institutions, initial decisions made by these leaders are thoroughly scrutinized and in most cases, even criticized. However, it is important for every leader, manager or decision maker at whatever level to have proper decision making practices, based on professionalism, experience and backed by intuition. After every decision is made, it is always important to assess its viability and effectiveness of decisions made by managers, and this will be seen by assessing three criteria used to determine a decision’s viability (Russo, 2001, p. 182).
Secondly, ease in implementation is another criteria used in determining whether a manager is effective in decision making is the ease in the decision’s implementation. Every decision should be made and the recommendations implemented in the easiest possible way. This means that the staff working in the organization or institution should not have a hard time implementing it. Lastly, time is yet another important factor to consider, and the amount of time a manager takes before making a concrete and applicable decision is another important factor to consider in order to understand if a manager is a good decision maker or not. A good decision maker should always take the least time possible to make decisions especially those that call for emergency (Hammond & Keeney, 2002, p. 133).
Finally, it is also important to focus on making of assumptions in decision making. Some cases call for making of assumptions in order to make a decision, especially in cases where these decisions will not in a large way affect the decisions made as well as the outcome of the decision. When using assumptions, it is always important to start by assessing the existing trend of the case under scrutiny, and that way the assumptions to be made will be as correct as possible (Plous, 1993, p. 57).
REFERENCES
Hammond, J. & Keeney, R. (2002). Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Plous, S. (1993). The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making (McGraw-Hill Series in Social Psychology). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Russo, J. (2001). Winning Decisions: Getting It Right the First Time. New York: Oxford University Press.
