Choices and decisions are elements that play a daily part of
everyone’s lives. With decisions lie indecisiveness. Should I?, Should I not?,
I will!, No, I will not!... Okay, I will do nothing! This indecisiveness is an
example of the waffling that goes on in my head all of the time when faced with
a decision. The decision could be as
simple as what movie to watch or should I go exercise. I had a world class
debate in my head tonight about when to begin this blog. Individual decisions
can be tough, but throw in a second person, and the decision could become much
more difficult. I know I am not the only one to have trouble deciding where to
eat with my significant other. Sometimes I feel like we need a strategic plan
just to pick out where to go to dinner. Now, consider how difficult it can be
for an organization to make decisions. I picture upper management squabbling in
a board room much like husband and wife getting testy with each other about
household decisions. In her 2010 Harvard Business interview, Marcia Blenko
discusses the topic of how organizations can make better decisions.
Marcia Blenko implies that decisions should be used as the
building blocks of the company (Better Decisions, 2010). In her interview,
Blenko argued that decision effectiveness correlates positively with employee
engagement and organizational performance, discussed some impediments to good
decision making, and listed four elements to good decisions. Blenko summed up
the importance of decision making by stating that companies will have at a
higher rate of production a better financial position if better choices are
made (Better Decisions, 2010).
I will further examine the statement that decision
effectiveness correlates positively with engagement by examining two employees
with the same job duties at different companies. Since I am sitting at my desk
in the office doing this assignment, we will say that the employee’s job is to
make the legs of desks. The first employee, who works at Desk Incorporated, has
the workspace, tools, and authority to make the desk. Because this employee
faces no boundaries, they have no slowdowns in the production of desk legs.
On the other hand,
the second employee working at Desk World does not have as easy in a time
making desk legs. Desk World’s policy is for the employee first to ask
management for the tools needed to build the desk legs, and then they must be
told which workspace they will be using that day, and then must wait on
management approval to begin working on the desks. The employee at Desk World has
a much harder time doing their job, which will slow down production and
eventually begin to stall organizational performance. Brown (2011) defined motivational climate as
the employee’s morale and overall attitude affecting the level of performance.
Desk World may not know they are guilty of doing this, but having their
employee jump through multiple hoops just to do their job creates a negative
motivational climate.
Blenko touches on the fact that sometimes companies are not
able to make good decisions because impediments stand in the way of the
decision. When asked about some of the
things that get in the way of good decision making, Blenko stated that a major
problem these days is complexity. She said that many companies operated in a
matrix or cube, so it is very difficult to determine who makes decisions in
today’s companies (Better Decisions, 2010). The organizational chart that was
once prevalent in determining company’s decision makers is now unreliable.
Some other impediments, in my opinion, are control and
conflicting agendas. After college, I took a job as an accounts receivable
clerk at a law firm. The firm had three
managing partners, who were the namesake of the company, and six or seven
shareholders. It was always interesting when firm decisions were to be made.
The three managing partners seemed to hold control over the other shareholders,
creating a stalemate in the decision. Also, there were many times where each of
the ten decision makers had a different agenda as to why the decision must be
one way or the other. I was never in the board room when decisions were being
made, of course, but it seemed like decisions were more difficult than they had
to be. In my opinion, there were too many hands in the proverbial cookie jar.
Control and conflicting agendas are not part of the recipe of a good decision. Though I believed this was a good place to
work, the impediments that got in the way of the decision making began to
affect the corporate culture.
Blenko suggests there are four elements to good decision
making: quality, speed, yield, and effort (Better Decisions, 2010). Quality
relates to the value of the decision. An organization may ask itself, “Did we
make a good decision for the company?” Speed relates to how quickly the company
made a decision compared to the competition. Today’s business world is fast-paced
and cutthroat, so companies must make effective decisions quickly or they will
be left behind. Yield revolves around the extent the decision was made
according to the plan. The company would take a step back to view if the
decision worked out like it was planned. The effort is the organizational cost
and energy expended while making the decision. Blenko compares the effort to
Goldilocks, where the amount of energy and cost should be just right (Better
Decisions, 2010).
After listening to Blenko’s four elements in good decision
making, I began to think if there was anything missing from her list. Are there
any other factors that go into decision making? My first thought was
prioritization. Companies must make sure to prioritize the decisions in order
of importance. But in re-examining the elements, priority could be linked to
quality. As an accountant, my next thought revolved around the budget and if
the decision will have an effect on costs, which ties into the effort. I had
several “aha” moments where I thought I discovered another important element,
but they all linked back to one of Blenko’s original elements.
There are several things that I learned from this exercise.
First, my company does not make decisions based on an organizational chart. In
my department, it would be easy to say that the VP of Finance is on the top of
the organizational chart, so the decision lies with her. The Controller, Budget
Director, Assistant Controller, or Director of cash management would be part of
the decision based on the subject, so department decisions do not lie solely in
the hands of the VP. On a larger level, it seems like the college president
would have the final say in the crucial college decisions, but he has an
executive staff that could have differing agendas, and ultimately answers to a
Board of Directors.
I also learned that I need to begin to factor the four
elements of quality, speed, yield, and effort into my daily decisions. I have a
habit of only factoring in quality when it comes to my decision making. I often
ask myself, “Did I make the correct decision?” I used quality and only quality
to determine if I made a good decision. I believed I made the correct decision,
so it was an effective decision. I need to incorporate the other three elements
into determining if my decision is effective.
References
Brown, D. R. (2011). An Experimental Approach to Organization
Development (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
How Companies Can Make Better Decisions, Faster - YouTube.
(2010) Retrieved September 6, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbxpg6D4Hk8&feature=player_embedded
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