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Saturday 10 August 2013

Ignou MBA Solved Assignment MS 01 2013 What are the common barriers to effective Decision making


Question 2). What are the common barriers to effective Decision making? How can they be overcome? Quote and describe the instances from your own experiences or the experiences you are aware of relating to and substantiating the answers to this question. Briefly describe the organisation and the situation, you are referring to.

Answer :
      You as a manager make many decisions in your life. Some are very much easy and some are very much complex. And some time we cant take any decision and our mind is frozen that is the barrier of the problem solving. A number of barriers may exist that affect the actuality of problem solving and decision making. Decision makers may not be aware that barriers are detracting from the decision-making process. Some of the most common barriers to problem solving and decision making are:

1). Resistance to change: People are often reluctant to change from the time-honored way of doing things. Resistance to change can prevent people from taking chances and from considering new possibilities.

2).Habits: Habits limit our vision of what can be accomplished and many stand in the way of solving a problem. Habits may go undetected by an individual and may be a tremendous deterrent to correcting a problem. For example, receptionist who is having difficulty in completing his or her work may be unaware that the habit of taking personal calls is taking the bulk of work time.

3).Individual insecurity: Individual insecurity may deter individuals from taking risks or from pursuing behavior that may require them to take a stand. Individual insecurity may come from past experiences or from an overall lack of self-confidence.

4).Past history: Knowing what has happened before and what worked and did not work can inhibit an individual's desire to try new methods of problem solving or decision making. Past history is frequently an excuse for not making changes. The individual, who may not wish to approach a situation in a new way, may remind others that a similar idea failed in the past.

5).Fear of success or failure: At some time, everyone experiences some type of fear. The fear of success or failure may be viewed as unreasonable, but it can greatly deter the confrontation of problems. The unknown can be a frightening thing. When a new way of doing something is attempted, the possibility exists that it may work well or not at all. In either instance, changes may result. While some people thrive on recognition, others shy away from it. These fears may cause people to avoid the possibility of success or failure altogether.

6).Jumping to conclusions: When problems must be solved and decisions made, it is easy to jump to conclusions. When someone jumps to conclusions, assumptions are made about what might or might not work or the possible results; assumptions may frequently take on negative perspectives.

7).Perceptions: As we have stated, perceptions are the ways that we see things based on our experiences. We may be unable to see something from another perspective because we are so blinded by our own perception.

You as a manager make many decisions in your life. Some are very much easy and some are very much complex. To take more effective decisions you must follow have to take care of the following steps in order to overcome the barriers in effective decision making.

THINK AND CONSULT:
Many people do not think before taking decisions. So in order to have an effective decision you must think for a while and analyze that what are causes of the problem, then make a list of the alternatives then choose the best one from them. After brainstorming you must get help from your employees, family and friends, and also from the one who has experience, in order to have the possible means to understand the implantation of your decision.

•TAKE AN EYE ON ORGANIZATIONAL GOAL:
The most important strategy while taking decision is to keep an eye on your goal. You as a manager must have to take care of the organizational goals and interests while taking decisions. You must know what are the needs of the problem that are required to be solved? And why these should be solved? In this way you can be able make an effective decision because when you know that why you are making a decision, it will make you to stick with it and defend it.

•CONSIDER THE CONSEQUENCES:
This is the key step of effective decision making because in this you will be asking yourself that what the results of your decision are. How it will affect your organization. Whether the decision you are taking is in the favor of organization or not?  It is important step because it will make you able to understand the pros and cons of your decision that you are going to take.

•MAKE YOUR FINAL DECISION AND EVALUATE IT:
Once you have made the final decision and took an action towards it then you must have to evaluate your decision in order check whether your actions are working in a right manner or not. And you should give yourself permission to be okay with any failure that may arise because there is not any magic formula for effective decision making. It is a type of a risk that you can control by following such steps. You must take care of the “timing” because timing matters a lot in taking actions towards decision making. You must avoid poor timing and take actions whenever these are required and do not make higher expectations from any of your decisions and always be optimistic.

A well organized decision-making process usually leads to the effective decision-making. Without a well-defined process, you take high risk in making decisions that are based on inappropriate information and analysis. Many variables can affect the final impact of your decision. However, if you establish strong base for decision making, make good alternatives, evaluate these alternatives thoroughly, and then check your decision-making process, you will improve the quality of your decisions.

Problem solving series
There are two wasys :
1).Adaptive Decision Making
2).Group Dynamics

Adaptive Decision Making
       Adaptive techniques for solving problems are a combination of logic and common sense, and while not precise, can produce satisfactory solutions.
If you cannot follow the complete problem solving process, use these techniques when you
§     have little time for research
§     don't need exhaustive analysis
§     can accept the risks
§     can make reversible decisions

Group Dynamics
  • Decisions made in groups differ substantially from those made by individuals, and this is why organizations put groups to use. What is less clear, and heavily debated amongst researchers, is how decision quality differs between groups and individuals.
  • The presence of a well developed group synergy, often achieved through healthy levels of dissent, typically results in preferable outcomes, while groupthink can lead to harmonizing and premature consensus.
  • Harvard professor and researcher Richard Hackman proposed five conditions that increase the probability of success for groups involved in decision making. Hackman mentions effective leadership, amongst other items, within the group context that contribute materially to successful group outcomes.

Know-how
        One of the most common barriers in decision making is not knowing how to make a decision in the first place.
It may seem strange, but many folks do not know how specifically they actually make decisions, or they use different decision making strategies in different circumstances without realizing it.

Expert, or not
Other barriers to decision making concern experts. Some will defer unquestioningly to authority and make no attempt to consider whether the expert's choice actually applies to them or not. The converse of this is where someone is so internally referenced that they ignore expert advice that would actually be useful for them. They are determined to do it their own way, even with difficult decisions.

The best
Major barriers in decision making nowadays are fear and anxiety at getting it wrong. We have this idea that there is one best solution and that anything else is second-rate. This notion sometimes leads to an excessive gathering of information to the point where sometimes the decision never actually gets made.
One way around this is to make effective decisions as opposed to perfect ones. As General George S. Patton said, 'A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week'.

What might happen...
In a similar vein, further barriers in decision making are the desires to avoid negative consequences and unpleasant aspects. This may lead to indecision, or simply the choosing of a safe option to avoid controversy. This can be especially tricky because often times there are unexpected consequences to any decision.
The reason things are unexpected is that they are unexpected! It's just not possible to predict these. Life happens and the world is chaotic. A useful skill is to be able to use whatever occurs so that you still get to achieve your outcome. That means you keep your goal in mind, but be flexible in how you achieve it.

What's involved?

When you ask a question about how to make a decision, there are two things you need to consider. You, and your decision making process.
If you need to do a particular job, it's best to use the right tool for the job.
But if the tool is not in very good shape, it may not work particularly well. A blunt scissors, for example, won't perform as well as a sharp one.
Similarly, it's important that YOU are in good form before you get to the actual decision making part.

How does this relate to how to make a decision?
If you're having a bad time and things are not going well, it makes sense not to make important decisions during this time. Chances are they may not work out so well either!
So when people use phrases such as
·                     weighed down
·                     feeling down
·                     the weight of the world on his shoulders
·                     cramped
·                     confined
this is their bodies way of telling them they are not working as well as they could... and it's probably not a good idea to be making decisions at such moments.
Of course, there will be times when you absolutely have to make decisions when you are stressed or under pressure. A useful trick here to minimize such occurrences is to make decisions ahead of time, that is, before you 'have to'.
For example, if you plan to buy an expensive item, you might decide, before you go to the shop or store, what the maximum you're prepared to pay, rather than being pressured into paying more at the last minute by a slick salesman. Or you decide before a negotiation what you want and what you are prepared to concede, rather than going along and hoping for the best.
In this way you can make decisions when you are relaxed, calm and without pressure.

The 'YOU' part
When someone is in a good mood they often describe themselves as
·                     feeling light
·                     walking tall
·                     walking with their head held high
·                     they have a glide in their stride
·                     moving gracefully
Have you ever considered where these phrases come from? They are actually descriptions of the awareness people have of their physical bodies at different times.
Phrases such as
·                     Shake it off
·                     Sleep on it
·                     Let's step away from it for a moment
·                     Have a breather
are used when we want to distance ourselves, or think differently about, some issue. We inherently know that moving our body in different ways gives us different ways of thinking.
This also explains why it's often when someone leaves their desk to get a coffee that they are suddenly inspired in that they realize the answer to a problem or understand which choice to make.
There are also other more subtle internal signals that let us know how to make good decisionsand you can learn about your own personal signals here...
On a similar note, knowing what your own personal values are also allows you to be able to make faster decisions.

Children and teens

Special consideration has to be given to children and teens in decision making because it takes time for the brain to develop and there are many factors that influence adolescents in their decision making.

A rough guideline...

The general guideline then is:
Good mood = good decisions,
Bad mood = bad decisions.
I am taking 'bad mood' to include times of pressure, stress and time constraints, and I am not saying that all decisions made in such circumstances are bad decisions. Instead, it's more likely that we will make poorer decisions or decisions that are wrong when we are in a 'bad mood'.
And, of course, some people prefer to make decisions under pressure, they claim that they are more effective this way!!

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