Self Evaluation - Essay Example

SELF EVALUATION Introduction The process of decision making is as much important as it is critical and complicated. Reason being, errors can be very costly. Decisions bring about important outcomes for individuals, businesses, governments, and societies, and learning the ways to improve your decision making abilities would only benefit us and might save us from huge losses. Sometimes the errors induced by biases in judgment lead decision makers to pay a heavier cost, involve in needless conflicts and even accept the wrong jobs.

Given the massive costs that can result from suboptimal decision making, it is critical for every organization to focus on improving their knowledge about strategies that can lead to better decisions.Evaluation ReportI am going to go a head and discuss a real life case study which I experienced myself while I was working as a house supervisor for Familia Group Home Inc. This business housed teens ranging from 14-22 with violent aggressive behaviors and drug addictions. The company just pretty much gave out applications for anyone who came by seeking employment and would send them to get a security background check if cleared they could be hired by the owner.

There were 10 employees all together at that time.Process of decision makinga) define the problemThe company did not have any standard operating procedures and/or policies hence the problems occurring due to the absence of such policies are self explanatory. For example, the employees reporting to work on time had no incentive of doing so while the employees who were not punctual faced no embracement. b) Identify the criteriaMy objective was to basically establish an effective and efficient human resource department comprising of at least one HR coordinator and one assistant.

I could not have just hired one person because like Bazerman, Loewenstein, and White (1992) have also demonstrated that people exhibit less will power when they weigh choices separately rather than jointly. The purpose was to create a set of policies like, Performance appraisal/Evaluation plans, Standardized application forms paying attention to details,Re structuring the training modules focusing on behavioral treatment and techniques, medication handling and maintaining discipline. Maintain employee records for referencesc) Weighing the criteria Following chart illustrates how I rated them from A to C where A being the highest and C the lowest.

DEICISIONSRATEPerformance appraisal and EvaluationsBNew standard applicationformsARe structuring the training modulesCMaintenance of employeerecordsAd) Generating alternativesThe challenge was to compare the cost of hiring a qualified and experienced HR person versus the cost of having un-organized and un-monitored employees leading to jeopardized care of the facility and compromised treatment of the children, which of course was against the aim of the organization. Therefore there were 2 options, Hire a qualified HR person having some relevant experienceKeep everything same (no change)Implement basic policies ourselves i.e. set base for a bigger change by making small changes.e) Rating the alternativesThe problem with hiring a new person for taking care of human resources was not only the cost of it being higher than the 2nd option but also the time.

The time, which the new person will require to adjust and understand the situation, get trained and then work according to it.f) Computing the optimal decisionWe decided to start taking initiatives ourselves to create a base for the human resource department. As if we would have hired the manager then, first 15-20 days would have been spent in training the new person and making him/her familiar with the staff and procedures. Therefore we took following steps,Create a new standard application form, where attention was paid to small details which were neglected before.

Making procedures for maintaining employee records so that we can look at their history when needed. Establishing a performance appraisal plan which will determine whether an employee should be getting a raise or a decrease. Creating a time sheet to record login and logout time, which saved the company $2500 in the second month of implementation? Optimal v/s favored decisionThe decision maker has a huge responsibility and it is important for him/her to consult and take opinions from different other sources in order to reduce any biases in the decision.

Trying to remove oneself mentally from a specific situation or to consider the class of decisions to which the current problem belongs (Kahneman & Lovallo, 1993). Taking an outsider’s perspective has been shown to reduce decision makers’ over confidence about their knowledge (Gigerenzer,Hoffrage,& Kleinbolting, 1991), the time it would take them to complete a task (Kahneman & Lovallo, 1993), and their odds of entrepreneurial success (Cooper, Woo, & Dunkelberg, 1988). Decision makers may also be able to improve their judgments by asking a genuine outsider for his or her view regarding a decision.

Since I was the only one involved in the process, and the only source of getting 2nd opinion was internet through research, naturally, there were no discrepancies between my optimal calculated decision and the favored decision. However it helped me a lot to neutralize and rationalize my decision by doing some research online.Challenges in computing the optimal decisionSome suggestive results in this area include the findings that willpower is weakened when people are placed under extreme cognitive load (Shiv & Fedorkihn, 1999) and when they are inexperienced in a choice domain (Milkman, Rogers, & Bazerman, 2009).

Other research has shown that people make less impulsive, suboptimal decisions in many domains when they make choices further in advance of their consequences (see Milkman, Rogers, & Bazerman, 2008, for a review). Its true that when you have to make such an important decision alone, you are under a lot of pressure and just the very thought of not committing a blunder is enough to make you slip off the track.Weaknesses in a fully rational model of decision makingI believe that the capacity of a human mind is far too less to meet the requirements for full rationality.

In my opinion the biggest weakness of the rational decision making model is, if the calculations conclude that option 1 is better than option 2 for example, and psychologically you are somehow convinced for the 2nd option, then it becomes quite difficult to implement the decision, as after all we are all human beings.ConclusionRegardless of its weaknesses, the rational model of decision making helped me in making a quite calculated optimal decision and gladly it worked. It is a great way of making successful decisions for people who are susceptible to decision biases and gives an automated solution which will work most of the times.

The best part is, if it didnt work you will at least not blame yourself for the outcome. Besides the fact that I was actually making this decision as an outsider not being a professional HR person and was primarily taking care of another domain helped too, like Thompson, Gentner, and Loewenstein (2000), both Idson et al. (2004) and Moran, Bereby-Meyer, and Bazerman (2008) found that individuals who were encouraged to see and understand the common principle underlying a set of seemingly unrelated tasks subsequently demonstrated an improved ability to discover solutions in a different task that relied on the same underlying principle.

This work is consistent with Thompson et al.’s (2000) observation that surface details of learning opportunities often distract us from seeing important underlying, generalizable principles.ReferencesBazerman, M. H. & Chugh, D. (2005). Bounded awareness: Focusing failures in negotiation. In L. Thompson (Ed.), Frontiers of Social Psychology: Negotiation. Psychological Press.Bazerman, M. H., Loewenstein, G. F., & White, S. B. (1992). Reversals of preference in allocation decisions: Judging an alternative versus choosing among alternatives.

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Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 82(1), 60-75.Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.Shiv, B., & Fedorikhin, A. (1999). Heart and mind in conflict: The interplay of affect and cognition in consumer decision making. Journal of Consumer Research, 26(3),278-292.Milkman, K.L., Rogers, T., & Bazerman, M. (2008). Highbrow films gather dust: Astudy of dynamic inconsistency and online DVD rentals. HBS Working Paper 07-099.

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Tepper Working Paper2004-E42.Kahneman, D., & Lovallo, D. (1993). Timid choices and bold forecasts: A cognitive perspective on risk and risk taking. Management Science, 39, 17-31.Idson, L. C., Chugh, D., Bereby-Meyer, Y., Moran, S., Grosskopf, B., & Bazerman, M. (2004). Overcoming focusing failures in competitive environments. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 17(3), 159-172.