4. Why Decision Making
• For solving problems
• For choosing right answers
• For resolving confusion( or conflict?)
• For satisfaction
• A routine requirement
– Professional or otherwise
• Nothing is more difficult and therefore
more precious than to be able to decide.
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6. What Is Decision Making
• Decision
– Making up our mind.
– Making a choice among available alternatives.
• Decision Making
– A process of identifying problems and opportunities
and resolving them.
– The process of examining your options, comparing
them and choosing a course of action.
• Involves efforts before and after the actual
choice.
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7. Factors Influencing
• Perception
• Priority
• Acceptability
• Risk
• Resources
• The inability to make a decision has often
been passed off as a patience
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8. Factors Influencing
• Goals
• Values
• Demands
• Styles
• Judgment
• When you have to make a choice and
don’t make it, that is in itself is a choice.
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9. 6 C’s
• Construct
• Compile
• Collect
• Compare
• Consider
• Commit
• Life is the sum of all your choices
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10. 6 C’s
• Construct
– A clear picture of what must be decided
• Compile
– List of requirements that must be met
• Collect
– Information on alternatives that meet the
requirements
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11. 6 C’s
• Compare
– The alternatives that meet the requirements.
• Consider
– What might go wrong of each factor
• Commit
– To a decision and follow through it
• Good decisions come from experience and
experience comes from bad decisions.
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13. Types Of Decisions
• Programmed
– Routine decisions
• Choices made in response to relatively well defined
common problems and alternatives
• Rules and procedures make it easy
• Some persons are very decisive when it
comes to avoiding.
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14. Types Of Decisions
• Non programmed
– Made in response to situations that are
• Unique,
• Poorly defined and largely unconstructed,
• Have significant consequences,
• Uncertainty is great,
• Decisions are complex,
• Involve strategic thinking
– Indecision becomes decision with time.
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15. Types Of Decisions
• Adaptive decisions
– Choices made in response to combination of
moderately unusual problems and alternative
solutions
• Innovative decisions
– Decisions based on discover, identification and
diagnosis of unusual and ambiguous problems.
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19. Process
Define and
Follow up and
digest the
control
problem
Implementing
Set goals
the solution
Evaluate
alternative Search for
solutions and alternative
select the solutions
best
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20. Barriers
• Escalation of commitment
• Technology
• Psychological biases
• Illusion of control
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21. Inherent Personal Traps
• Trying too hard to play it safe
• Letting fears and biases hit your thinking and
analysis
• Getting lost in the minimum minutia can
cause trouble
• Craving for unanimous approval
• Trying to make decisions which are outside
realm of authority
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22. Inherent System Traps
• Willing to begin with too little, inaccurate or
wrong information
• Overlook viable alternatives or waste time
considering alternatives which have no
realistic prospects
• Not following the six C’s
• Failure to clearly define the results you expect
to achieve
• Worst of all failure to reach a decision
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23. Styles
• Using knowledge, skills and experience
• Applying logic to reach conclusions
• Analysing issues to understand the whole
picture
• Coming to conclusions by hunch
• Being led by emotion and sensitivity
• Using imagination to create new ideas
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24. Strategies
• Engage in constructive conflict / Brain
storming
• Nominal group technique
• Delphi technique
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26. Always Remember
• No decision can be made any longer without
taking into account not only world as it is but
the world as it will be
• Decision making is the cognitive process
leading to the selection of course of action
among available and suitable alternatives
• Every decision making process produces a
final choice. It can be action or an opinion.
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27. Always Remember
• It begins when we used to do something but
we do not know what. Therefore decision
making is a reasoning process which can be
rational and can be based on explicit
assumptions or tacit assumptions.
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28. 6 Hats
• To use Six Thinking Hats to improve the quality
of your decision-making, look at the decision
"wearing" each of the thinking hats in turn.
• Each "Thinking Hat" is a different style of
thinking. These are explained below:
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29. White Hat
With this thinking hat, you focus on the data
available. Look at the information you have,
and see what you can learn from it. Look for
gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill
them or take account of them.
This is where you analyze past trends, and try
to extrapolate from historical data.
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30. Red Hat
Wearing the red hat, you look at the decision
using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion.
Also try to think how other people will react
emotionally, and try to understand the
intuitive responses of people who do not fully
know your reasoning.
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31. Black Hat
When using black hat thinking, look at things
pessimistically, cautiously and defensively. Try
to see why ideas and approaches might not
work. This is important because it highlights
the weak points in a plan or course of action.
It allows you to eliminate them, alter your
approach, or prepare contingency plans to
counter problems that arise.
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32. Black Hat
• Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans
tougher and more resilient. It can also help
you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you
embark on a course of action. Black Hat
thinking is one of the real benefits of this
technique, as many successful people get so
used to thinking positively that often they
cannot see problems in advance, leaving them
under-prepared for difficulties.
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33. Yellow Hat:
The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It
is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to
see all the benefits of the decision and the
value in it, and spot the opportunities that
arise from it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to
keep going when everything looks gloomy and
difficult.
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34. Green Hat
The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is
where you can develop creative solutions to a
problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking,
in which there is little criticism of ideas. A
whole range of creativity tools can help you
here.
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35. Blue Hat
The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is
the hat worn by people chairing meetings.
When running into difficulties because ideas
are running dry, they may direct activity into
Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans
are needed, they will ask for Black Hat
thinking, and so on.
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