Decision Making Process

Prepared by:

Prince Cielo

What is Decision Making Process?

I. Introduction

Decision Making Process• According to Baker..

“efficient decision-making involves a series of steps that require the input of information at different stages of the process, as well as a process for feedback”.

• In Psychology..decision-making is regarded as the cognitive process

resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several alternative possibilities.

What does Decision Making really mean?

Decision Making Process• Defined simply as:

“ A process of making a choice between a numbers of options and committing to a future course of actions”.

Process6 Steps in

Decision Making Process

Steps in Decision Making Process

Step 1

• Identify the problem

Step 2

• Diagnosing the problem

Step 3

• Discover alternative courses of action

Step 4

• Evaluate alternatives

Step 5

• Select the best alternatives

Step 6

• Implementing and follow up action

• This stage involves understanding with absolute clarity what the issue is and what type of decision is going to be made.

• The first thing one has to do is to state the underlying problem that has to be solved. You have to clearly state the outcome that you desire after you have made the decision.

This step includes:

Make sure it’s a problem and not just a symptom of a problem. Problem identification is subjective. Discrepancies can be found by comparing current results with some

standard. Managers aren’t likely to characterize a discrepancy as a problem if they

perceive that they don’t have the authority, information, or other resources needed to act on it.

• Identify the problemStep 1

• Diagnosing the problemStep 2

• This stage is where you will do an extensive analysis of the issue and really delve into many facets.

• This is necessary to classify the problem in order to know who must take the decision and who must be informed about the decision taken.

This step includes:

Explore the issue from different perspective(ex: using the diverse expertise of your decision-making team)

Ask what, why, when, who, where, and how questions so the issue is fully revealed.)

Refine the decision statement based on this analysis.

• Discover alternative courses of action

Step 3

• In this step of the decision-making process, you will list all possible and desirable alternatives.

• Here, you do not have to restrict yourself to think about the very obvious options, rather you can use your creative skills and come out with alternatives that may look a little irrelevant.

• You would also have to do adequate research to come up with the necessary facts that would aid in solving the problem.

• Evaluate alternativesStep 4

• One of the most important stages of the decision-making procedure where you have to analyze each alternative you have come up with.

This step includes:

Finding out the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

Filter out the options that you think are impossible or do not serve your purpose.

Rating each option with a numerical digit would also help in the filtration process.

• Select the best alternativesStep 5

• In this step is where the hard work you have put in analyzing would lead to a proper decision.

• This includes selecting the alternative which seems

to be best suited to you.• Choice of the best alternative is the most critical

point in decision making.

• Implementing and follow up actionStep 6

• In this step you experience the results of your decision and evaluate whether or not it has “solved” the need you identified in Step 1. If it has, you may stay with this decision for some period of time.

• If the decision has not resolved the identified need, you may repeat certain steps of the process in order to make a new decision.

• Ex: example, gather more detailed or somewhat different information or discover additional alternatives on which to base your decision.

Summary of Decision Making Process

End of Slide