Importance Of Effective Decision Making

Effective Decision Making

Decision making is an important requisite for management and leadership. Through decision making, people are able to make decisions of quality. However, decision making alone will not suffice. A person should be able to have a problem solving skill as these two are closely linked with each other. If problem solving and decision making are used skillfully, people are able to become creative in indentifying solutions for problems which require a mixture of skills. Vasilescu (2011) defines decision as an act of reaching a conclusion. It is an opinion or judgment reached after careful consideration and assessment of the problem involved. Decisions are important because these are key factors which determined the success

Hence, a decision is needed to put things back on track. In this scenario, a manager may be able to think of an easy solution, but he has to analyze the cause of the problems and what are the possible means of overcoming such. This is because an effective strategic decision is very easy to understand but difficult to achieve. Vasilescu (2011) asserts that one problem with decision making is the thinking that people can make decisions immediately. Most likely, people make decisions through identifying and comparing circumstances in order to determine which one produces the most favorable resolution. However, reality tells otherwise. In practice, people use "mental shortcuts" as they make decisions in order to expedite the process of decision making based on common or previous experience and common sense (Vasilescu, 2011). This should not be. Although the use of common sense and previous experience may have positive effects, a person or organization faced with the problem must create a mental matrix as to what should be done in order to fully resolve the issue at hand. Martin (2015) recommends for a four-point strategy in making a quality decision: (i) indentify the problem; (ii) think of the possible solutions; (iii) assess the possibilities which brings the organization closer to resolving the problem; and (iv) make the decision. Indentifying the problem is a crucial point. Through this, the organization is able to assess the issue that needs to be considered. Urgency of making a decision should not pressure the group as it will defeat its purpose in achieving quality decision. In this scenario, the organization must able to determine the root cause of the mistake and assess what are its negative effects. Second, when the group is able to think of the possible solutions, they are able to look at the problem with a new perspective. In this regard, every member of the group must have