Decision Making Model

Decision making consistently involves leadership in some form or the other. Leadership can be defined as "the initiation of new directions of locomotion by one or more individuals, which are then readily followed by other group members" (Krause J, Hoare D, Krause S, Hemelrijk C.K, Rubenstein D.I2000 Leadership in fish shoals. Fish Fish. 1, 82–89) Organizations can either designate leadership or identify internal individuals possessing qualities or having experience with personality inclined to lead. Having an in-depth understanding of the decision making process is bound to be critical not only for the explanation of individual behavior but also for the behavior of complex and multi-layered organizations.

There are both cognitive and social

“Often the right answer is self-evident and undisputed" (David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, 2007, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making for Harvard Business Review). Assessment of the situation, categorizing possible responses and responding appropriately are required to handle these issues. "Simple contexts, properly assessed, require straightforward management and monitoring. Here, leaders sense, categorize, and respond. That is, they assess the facts of the situation, categorize them, and then base their response on established practice." (David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, 2007, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making for Harvard Business Review) Both managers and employees have access to all the information required, decisions are easily delegated and necessary functions are automated. Incorrect classification can be a risk, where leaders chose not to ask for more information regardless of the complexity of the issue in hand. Micromanagement needs to be avoided, and a communication channel needs to be created keeping in mind “that best practice is, by definition, past practice” (David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, 2007, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making for Harvard Business Review) and is often the apt decision-making methodology for simple context

"In a complicated context, at least one right answer exists. In a complex context, however, right answers can’t be ferreted out." (David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, 2007, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making for Harvard Business Review) These issues arise due to a shift in management, merger or acquisition or not meeting the desired targets which can cause unpredictability and flux. Leaders when faced with this situation, instead of implementing a course of action must be patient enough to allow the path forward to reveal. The major challenge during such situations is that leaders fail to adopt an experimental mode of management and tend to become impatient and have a low tolerance to failure, due to which leaders fall back into traditional command-and-control style of management. "If they try to over control the organization, they will preempt the opportunity for informative patterns to emerge. Leaders who try to impose order in a complex context will fail, but those who set the stage, step back a bit, allow patterns to emerge, and determine which ones are desirable will succeed." (David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, 2007, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making for Harvard Business