After viewing the video
in the previous activity, reflect on the following questions in a well-written
post on your Reflection Blog.
Marcia Blenko argues that decision effectiveness correlates
positively with employee engagement and organizational performance. How do you
think that employee engagement relates to decision effectiveness?
What are some impediments to good decision making?
Blenko suggests that there are four elements of good decisions:
quality, speed, yield, and effort. In your opinion, is there anything missing
from this list?
What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in
your career?
No organization can be successful without the
ability of its leaders to make good, effective decisions. In order to achieve
this, corporate leaders and their counterparts must be able to be consistent
with their choices and also take some strategic risks in whatever market or
business they are trying to tap into. Like anything else, there are many
barriers to decision making effectiveness but if implemented correctly, the
choices made by organizations can lead them to major success if they focus on
the factors and considerations that entail the necessary examination and
adaptation to ensure proper timing and placement of decision making selections.
In the Harvard Business Review
Video, How Companies Can Make Better
Decisions, Marcia Blenko argues that decision effectiveness correlates positively
with employee engagement and organizational performance (HBR 2010). In my
personal opinion I would have to agree with this statement as I have been on
both ends of reaching a high level of employee engagement and a low level of
employee disengagement. In a position I held some time ago, I was extremely
empowered and motivated by upper level management. I was told to be creative
and take initiative and that it was okay to make mistakes as we learned from
them. I had never felt so empowered in any other jobs I had held and it had
allowed me to grow in both my personal and professional goals and aspirations.
After holding this position for quite some time, I was promoted and was therefore
placed under new management.
In this new position I held, the management I
received was very degrading and stifling. I was immediately disappointed as I
believed the promotion at the time was a step in the right direction for me in
order to enhance my creative abilities and implement new and improved strategic
changes in my organization. Instead I was faced with a decreased level of
interest in my new role as those creative abilities and level of empowerment
and engagement were completely stripped of me. I was left micromanaged,
frustrated and asking myself why I had ever taken this promotion. It was as
though I took a step backwards instead of forward.
“Engagement is an outcome. People choose to become
engaged if they have sufficient opportunity and motivation. You
can create the conditions so that people to do things because they want to,
rather than because they were told to. ” (Partovi, 2013). This was a clear message my
management at the time was missing. Instead of being motivated and empowered I
was stifled and stripped of all potential abilities to be outgoing, creative,
and influential in the decision making processes that were taking place. There
are always impediments to achieving desired results. A true leader must be able
to recognize those impediments and do their best to ensure that those barriers
are kept to a minimum so the organization is able to experience the positive
contributions made by staff members.
Some of the impediments to good decision making
include a foggy or inaccurate vision of the organizational expectations or
goals and non-existent implementations of employee engagement, empowerment, motivation
and recognition. If the organization experiences a lack of trust, ownership or
strategic planning and abilities this could also lead to ineffective decision
making. As decision making can be quite difficult at times it is important that
organizations recognize that good decision making is a skill set that can be
developed over time. The more and more decisions that are made, the better and
better you will get at making them, however it is also important to remember
that on this journey mistakes will be made along the way, some of which can
lead to organizational distress, which is why it is important to always educate
oneself on all factors of the effectiveness of decision making. In the words of
Mike Wyatt in his blog 6 Tips for Making
Better Decisions:
You cannot separate leadership from decisioning, for like it or
not, they are inexorably linked. Put simply, the outcome of a leader’s
choices and decisions can, and usually will, make or break them. The fact of
the matter is that senior executives who rise to the C-suite do so largely
based upon their ability to consistently make sound decisions. What most fail
to realize is while it may take years of solid decision making to reach the
boardroom, it often times only takes one bad decision to fall from the ivory
tower. As much as you may wish it wasn’t so, when it comes to being
a leader you’re really only as good as your last decision. (Myatt, 2013).
In order to make good decisions one
must consider the elements of what good decision making is all about. In the
HBR video discussed above Marcia Blenko states that her team defined decision
making by the quality speed, yield and effort of the decision being made (HBR
2010). While I would agree that each of these elements plays a true factor in
the success of decision making, I also feel as though boundary conditions of
decisions should also be taken into consideration as almost any decision made
will have barriers placed before it and it is important to know how to get past
those barriers in order o be successful. I also feel as though feedback of
decisions are important because it allows for all factors, opinions, views and
suggestions to be considered before a decision is implemented so that the
organization can be successful in all of its ventures.
What I feel I would take away most
from this exercise is how to be more cognizant of organizational barriers and
decision making effectiveness and my personal responsibility to stay active in
building these skills and implementing them as best as I can in my place of
work despite the organizational or management difficulties I may face in the
future. I think that I am better prepared to prioritize the factors that good
decision making entails and better able to reflect upon the pros and cons of
any strategic plans put forth in my department or position that I hold now or
will hold in the future. I also believe that the video has helped me to think
more objectively about decision making skills and the abilities that it takes
for leaders to effectively make decisions sometimes based off of the very
little information they have. I feel more prepared and inspired to make
effective decisions in both my place of work as well as my home life as each
environment offers very different aspects and goals of success.
References
D, J. (2009, March 19). 5 Elements
of an Effective Decision Making Process : Sources of Insight. Retrieved
from
http://sourcesofinsight.com/5-elements-of-an-effective-decision-making-process/
Harvard Business Review (2010, October 13). How Companies
Can Make Better Decisions, Faster [Video file]. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbxpg6D4Hk8&feature=player_embedded
Myatt, M. (2012, March 8). 6 Tips for
Making Better Decisions - Forbes [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/03/28/6-tips-for-making-better-decisions/
Partovi, M. (2013, May 26). 8 tips
for improving employee engagement — Let’s make organisations better! — Medium.
Retrieved from https://medium.com/lets-make-organisations-better/eb98c7a48704
