Thinking and Decision Making Issues - Essay Example

Thinking and decision making paper 19th February 2008 Decision making process involves different thinking styles. A good or a bad decision essentially depends on the thinking style. So decision-making and a thinking style are integral to each other and go hand in hand together. Thinking style shapes up in the personality of a decision maker over a longer period of time. It largely depends on personality traits, education, grooming environment, training and experience of a decision maker (Drucker, 2000).

In a tight bureaucratic setup, the thinking styles sharply differ from those in an open environment business organizations. The contemporary managerial practices in successful organizations need to have focused thinking styles for successful decision-making. Therefore for a successful leadership in an organization the decision-making entirely depends on the thinking styles of the managers. Different thinking styles of managers in organizations applied in different business environments are enumerated as below.

1- The first thinking style is a freelance style and is termed as white hat style. (Edward de bono 2008). In this style managers would just take benefit from the data available to them and put it into consideration for a decision. They would simply look at the facts and figures and would seldom go into the details. A note put up to them by their junior would suffice for their thinking over an issue and would usually decide on the basis of “as it is”. They would less involve themselves in various queries about the concerned issue and more or less decide on the basis of facts already available to them.

This process usually deprives them from the creative thinking and they are bent upon oversimplifying the facts for decision-making. Personality wise these managers are easy going and want to involve themselves as less as possible in the difficult situations. This is not essentially a very desirable thinking style. 2- The second thinking style is called the red hat thinking style. This style is mostly observed in the meeting chaired by the chief executives of an organization. The chairperson usually gives his/her louder thought on an issue based on his intuition or a creative approach.

Then the reaction from other participants in the meeting or stakeholders is noted. Adjustments are made according to the view of other people. This is more like a democratic style of thinking before making a decision. Some people react more emotionally and lose the sight of wisdom and reasoning in this process but yet this thinking style in decision-making process has its own merits. And this style is often practices in creative arts industry like films and theatres. 3- The third main style is called Black hat thinking (Edward de bono 2008) and is almost opposite of the white hat thinking style.

It basically focuses on the black spots, weaknesses and faults of a decision. This is a tougher thinking style and tries to leave no room for the errors and mistakes. This thinking style makes the decision making a flawless, tough and more resilient in nature and is desired in most of the military and closed bureaucratic organizations. This thinking process leaves the managers with fewer difficulties. And so often this style makes them more successful managers than those mentioned under white hat managers.

There are still other styles of thinking like yellow hat thinkers who always look at the positive aspects of the things and go along the situations whatever the circumstances may be. They are optimists in nature and want the things moving on. They have their own positive approach in their mind and keep them on the things for a longer time. Green hat thinking styles are creative thinkers and are often known as working in isolation and on creative arts like pictures poetry and music.

The blue hat thinkers are always thing on the process control. They are always good chairpersons on the meetings and so often found on referring the matters to tough thinkers like black hat managers. In fact all the above-mentioned thinking style are more or less found in a given organization and principally do not work in isolation. A good admixture of these thinking styles works in the organizations. Success of an organization depends on the manipulation and juxtaposition of above thinking styles in a proportion as is needed at a point of time.

Nature and work of an organization is also very relevant to the thinking styles mentioned above. When practically applied to different decision-making, these thinking styles produce different results. Again it depends upon the desirability of a result or the maneuvering and manipulation of results for its own advantage (Deutsch M., and P. Coleman, 2000). At different points in time various organizations bring about or place different thinking style for the production of desirable results.

Practically all the above thinking styles can not be compartmentalized in air tied or cut and dried categories as these are emanating from essentially the human social behaviors. However on the basis of different objectives, mission statements, and functions, quite obvious thinking styles are applied in these different organizations. Examples are briefly cited as under. 1- The first category of thinking style (white hat) is practiced mainly in the decision making process of the organizations working for charity purposes.

Many people working in these organizations quote their bosses to be easy going and slightest painstaking. These are the non-profit organizations. And also the rotary clubs, golf clubs etc where most of the people organize themselves for fun, charity or sporting purposes. 2- The red hat thinking is mainly found in most of the larger business concerns like multinationals. For the production and marketing being creative difficult and sort of innovative processes, the managers for criticism and re-evaluation by their junior colleagues throw the newer creative ideas.

Here the responses of the general people or herein called the consumers is also accounted for. Therefore this style of thinking in the decision process is most important from sustainability of profits point of view. 3- Tougher organizations like intelligence agencies, investigative concerns like police and military organizations apply black hat thinking process for cautious and defensive reasons. Their contingency plans are strictly tailored and made for a defined implementation. Government ministries and departments also apply this thinking style in their decision-making.

4- Yellow, green and blue hat thinking is found in the other organizations like medical, arts, film theatre, architecture organizations. This again very much depends upon the purpose and objective of an organization as to how, when and how far a particular or an admixture of all thinking styles is administered in a situation of a decision making process. In short thinking style which is the product of age, education, experience and training of a manager, is very basic to the decision making of process of an organization.

The thinking style and decision-making cannot be divorced from each other. Tougher decisions need black hat-thinking styles, lighter decisions employ white hat thinking styles. The red hat thinking is used in the organizations with creative goals. And the yellow, green, blues are variously employed in various organizations. However for a successful manager it is but necessary to mater and practice each and every thinking style and he/she must be very cautious about the application of these styles differently at different situations.

Similarly organizations are required to have managers with all different styles of thinking (McKay 2007) and they have to be employed for different situations of decisions making processes. References; 1-Deutsch M., and P. Coleman, 2000.The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: San Francisco 2-Drucker, 2000. Managing knowledge means managing oneself, a Leader to Leader, Oxford University Press London. 3-McKay. 2007. “Successful decision making”. Penguin ISBN 134555432 4-1-Edward de bono, 2008, “six thinking hats” www.mindtools.com