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Category: Decision Making

  • Participative Decision Making 4

    In the last byte, we looked at the organizational prerequisites (foundations) that assist a participative decision making. In this byte, we look at the individual prerequisites for a participative decision making.

    Research has indicated that there are three individual prerequisites for participation and empowerment at workplace these are:
    1. the capability to become psychologically involved in participative activities
    2. the motivation to act autonomously
    3. the capacity to see the relevance of participating for one’s own well-being.
    The first aspect of psychological involvement is extremely essential as a failure to be involved could be empowered could make them ineffective. Ex: Cultural aspects like having grown up in an authoritarian set up could hamper voluntary participation.
    The participative decision making is driven by people who are open to work autonomously – have an internal drive. If the team has dependent people they wouldn’t be effective contributors to the effort.
    The ability to look at a personal benefit (not short term alone but also long term) becomes important if one is to become an effective member of such a team.

  • Participative Decision Making 3

    In the last byte, we discussed about the advantages of participative decision making and how technology has influencing decentralized decision making. In today’s byte, we look at the foundations on which we could build participative decision making primarily organizational in dimension.

    We could classify the foundations necessary for a participative decision making, which enables empowering of employees towards enhanced task motivation and performance under two heads.
    1. Organizational
    2. Individual
    Organizational factors like a supportive organization culture and team-oriented work design play a major role in empowerment of the teams. Let’s understand this a bit, when we empower a lower level employee to make decisions – it is quite possible that the middle level management could sense fear and anxiety and in some extreme cases even terror! The senior leadership in such a scenario must create a culture that is reassuring to the middle level managers and also be supportive. If this factor is overlooked the middle management could turn into a restraining or disruptive force that puts participative decision making efforts off track.
     
    The design of work in these organizations shouldn’t be just limited to the concept of work specialization and narrow task definitions which make the work extremely routine in nature. This should be replaced with a more absolving and responsible of the complete piece of the work – we call this approach a team-oriented work design. This team oriented work design is a key organizational foundation that helps achieve broader tasks and a responsible execution.

  • Participative Decision Making 2

    In the last byte, we began our discussion on participative decision making. In today’s byte, we continue the discussion further.

    Participative decision making has several advantages to it; some of them are discussed in here:
    1. Given that the people affected by decision are generally involved in the decision making process, this helps reduce (if not eliminate) the negative experiences that could arise from organizational politics.
    2. Participative decision making helps increase employee creativity, job satisfaction and productivity. The employees involved look at the implementation of their choices, suggestions etc and this plays a crucial role in job satisfaction. The sense of ownership of the decision made helps increase productivity!
    It is interesting to note that the business environment of the present day is playing a huge role in fostering participative decision making.  We today live in a knowledge driven economy and the points of highest knowledge generation is typically at the boundaries of the organization – tapping them is quintessential for sustaining business advantage. Also, the advent of new technology and communication means has helped make decisions quick and decentralized!

  • Participative Decision Making

    In The last byte, we looked at the various types of creativity. In today’s byte, begin our discussion on how to unleash the potential of participation in decision making. 

    Intuition and Creativity are extremely handy in decision making, however there is not a prerogative that these are properties of managers alone – people at any level could pitch in with the relevant inputs for a better decision. With companies employing a large work force, effective management of the people could help the company improve its economic performance tremendously. Participative Decision making is one such means by which companies could capitalize on the power of its people.

    Participative decision making is a kind of decision making in which individuals who are affected by decision influences the making of decisions. In such cases the company generally created an empowered self-managed team to make decisions.
     
    Let’s take an example to understand this – In a hospitality industry – guests residing in the hotels have various requests and they interact extensively with the guest service personnel. Empowering the guest service personnel to do whatever is necessary to make guests happy – without really consulting their supervisors could be one way in which this could be used!  (Definitely the cultural context in which such decisions are made cannot be ignored.)

  • Decision Making: Creativity Factors – Individuals & Organizational

    In the last byte, we looked at some of the mental blocks to unlocking creativity. In today’s byte, we continue the discussion further and explore the roles of individual and organization factors in creativity.

    Creativity doesn’t just help in finding problems but also helps fixing them. Research has classified the kinds of creativity into four types, based on where it is triggered from and the source of the problem.
    1. Responsive Creativity
    2. Expected Creativity
    3. Contributory Creativity
    4. Proactive Creativity
    Responsive creativity refers to the response (solution) to a problem presented by other as part of your job. Expected creativity refers to the discovery of problems as part of the expectation the organization places on the individual. Contributory creativity refers to the situation where a problem is presented to you since you want to be creative and Proactive creativity refers to the nature of discovering a problem because you want to be creative!
     
    It is important to note – creativity has emerged as a global concern as a response to addressing the uncertainty that one faces in the modern day business and leaders play a key role in modeling creative behavior in organizations.

  • Decision Making: Creativity Inhibitors

    In the last byte, we looked at what organization characteristics influence creativity dimension of decision making. In today’s byte, we look at some of the mental blocks that inhibit creativity from emerging to its true potential. 

    One would need to understand that creativity is not hard-wired, it could be developed. It however would emerge only if the mental blocks that inhibit creativity are removed. Following a list of such mental blocks that research has identified:
    1. Search for “the” “right” answer
    2. Attempting to be logical
    3. Be bound by rules
    4. Avoiding Ambiguity
    5. Looking for practicality in the solution
    6. Fright of being foolish
    7. Trying to be in the comfort of only one’s expertise, avoid zones not under expertise
    8. Fearing failure
    9. Believing that one is not creative
    10. Eliminating Play from work!
    Unlocking these mental barriers could release the creativity hitherto untapped both for individuals as well as organization.

  • Decision Making: Creativity Influences 2

    In the last byte, we looked at how individual aspects influence creativity. In today’s byte, we look at the organizational aspects that influence creativity.

    The organizational environment in which one works also has implications on the creativity of an individual working in the organization. The environment could either be supportive to creativity or impede it – i.e. Creative facilitating or Creative impeding.

    Creative facilitating environments could involve aspects like autonomy, teams with diverse skill sets, supervisory staff who is supporting and willing to take risks etc. The environment which is creativity impeding would have a very strict evaluation and monitoring of the activities that one works on, a competing environment where if one wins the other looses etc.
     
    Flexible organization structures, participative decision making environment, strong relationships with supervisors and coworkers, appreciative of efforts etc could all be pushing the creativity horizons.  An organization which is extremely political, criticizing, and risk avoiding is detrimental to creativity in the work place.

  • Decision Making: Creativity Influences

    In the last byte, we were discussing about creativity and its influence on decision making. In today’s byte, we look at what factors influence creativity.
     
    The factors influencing creativity could be classified into two groups:
    1. Individual factors affecting creativity
    2. Organizational factors affecting creativity
    Several variables that are extremely individual specific could influence creativity some of these are: cognitive processes like divergent thinking (thinking of several potential solutions for a given problem), association ability, use of imagery etc are all part of the individual creativity.
     
    Other factors like breadth of individual interests, high energy, concern for achievements, intuition, judgment, self-confidence, tolerance of ambiguity, risk-taking etc have been found through research to be influencer of creative processes.
     
    Importantly, the mood of individuals – preferably good mood – helps achieve creativity.

  • Decision Making: Creativity

    In the last byte, we looked at the role of intuition in decision making. In today’s byte, we look at the role of creativity in decision making. 

    Creativity could be defined as a process influenced by individuals and organizational factors that result in the production of novel and useful ideas, products, or both. (Src: Ref book) The constantly changing environments in which the organizations operate require the employees to think of creative ways to solve the challenges they face.
     
    The process of Creativity could be seen to possess the following 4 stages:
    1. Preparation – seek out new experiences and opportunities to learn
    2. Incubation – reflective thought
    3. Illumination – sensing the insight to solve the problem
    4. Verification – determination if the solution or idea is valid
    It is interesting to note that the creative dimension relies a lot on the relaxation of the brain! So sleep well 🙂

  • Decision Making: Intuition

    In the last byte, we began our discussion on how individual influences affect Decision Making. In today’s byte, we look at the role played by Intuition in Decision Making.

    Intuition is in essence a preference used to gather data. It could be defined as a fast, positive force in decision making that is utilized at a level below consciousness and involved learned patterns of information.

    Intuition allows an individual to step into another’s role with ease, and this ability to take roles is a fundamental to development of moral reasoning. Moral reasoning would help in an ethical decision making process. 

    If the question one asks at this juncture is whether intuition could be taught? The answer research has found says “yes” – the researcher Agor, also cautioned that at the top of the organization, both the brain hemispheres become important – this means one would need to have both an analytical and intuitive mind functioning at their peak.