Decision-Making in Management
It is valuable to note the various decision-making styles briefly described: psychological, cognitive, and normative. Understanding which of these your management uses will go a long way to helping you most effectively negotiate requirements, project scope, and communicate your analytical findings. Another useful takeaway from the article is the description of the three main approaches to decision-making: avoiding, problem-solving, and problem-seeking. Sometimes the right decision is no decision, so avoiding it is not necessarily bad. However, if your manager consistently avoids decisions claiming there is not enough information despite your best efforts to provide it, you may need to find new ways to communicate your findings to allow the manager to have more confidence in making decisions.
The challenge of problem-seeking when it sends the team back to the proverbial drawing board can be overcome with a robust TOR development process and a fully informed and formal scope negotiation process, both of which will help alleviate concerns that the project is not progressing as needed. It will be quite valuable for you to know the individual approach your manager or management team is likely to use and that of the overall organizational culture.
Types of Decisions
Three approaches to decision making are avoiding, problem solving and problem seeking.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Differentiate between the three primary decision-making approaches: avoiding, problem solving, and problem seeking
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key Points
- One approach to decision making is to not make a choice – that is, to avoid making a decision altogether.
- Identifying and selecting a solution to a problem is a frequent type of decision outcome.
- Sometimes decision making results in the need to restate the purpose and subject of the choice; this is known as problem seeking.
Key Terms
- problem seeking: The process of clarifying, understanding, and restating the problem.
- problem solving: Problem solving involves using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to specific problems.
Every decision-making process reaches a conclusion, which can be a choice to act or not to act, a decision on what course of action to take and how, or even an opinion or recommendation. Sometimes decision making leads to redefining the issue or challenge. Accordingly, three decision-making processes are known as avoiding, problem solving, and problem seeking.
Avoiding
One decision-making option is to make no choice at all. There are several reasons why the decision maker might do this:
- There is insufficient information to make a reasoned choice between alternatives.
- The potential negative consequences of selecting any alternative outweigh the benefits of selecting one.
- No pressing need for a choice exists and the status quo can continue without harm.
- The person considering the alternatives does not have the authority to make a decision.
One example of avoiding a decision occurs routinely at the Supreme Court of the United States (as well as other appellate courts). The Supreme Court will decline to hear a case because, in their judgment, the issues have not been sufficiently considered in lower courts.
Problem Solving
Most decisions consists of problem-solving activities that end when a satisfactory solution is reached. In psychology, problem solving refers to the desire to reach a definite goal from a present condition. Problem solving requires problem definition, information analysis and evaluation, and alternative selection.
Problem Seeking
On occasion, the process of problem solving brings the focus or scope of the problem itself into question. It may be found to be poorly defined, of too large or small a scope, or missing a key dimension. Decision makers must then step back and reconsider the information and analysis they have brought to bear so far. We can regard this activity as problem seeking because decision makers must return to the starting point and respecify the issue or problem they want to address.