Steps to Decision Making in a Company - Essay Example

? Steps to decision making in a company Critical thinking and decision making are some of the factors determining success in any company or work place. The managing team is always faced with more than one alternative to choose from. The best decisions arise when all the alternatives are critically analyzed and the best considered. This work is about several steps to be followed before the privatization of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). It also involves workers’/ union’s participation in such decision making, this is done by asking some relevant questions associated with the decisions to be made. The initial stage is to perceive the problems associated with the company being in the state docket, low return is likely to be the major shortcoming. The main question in this stage is what to be done to reverse the situation. Human resource department, however, is the most critical since it deals with human, who have feelings and emotions among other traits. Formulating the problem may require special skills and understanding. A time a company may be compelled to hire or outsource skilled and experienced professionals to detect or ascertain some short comings. The basics behind problem detection are comparing the current situation with the company goals or target. Some economic yard sticks can be used to evaluate accompany and ascertain whether it is on a gaining or losing trend (Eric, 2003). Problems related to human resource can best be ascertained by involving every worker to give his/her opinion on the company’s management and operation. Workers from different departments and positions can be interviewed one at time, this is to ensure confidentiality. The second step is interpreting the problem. This requires some deep understanding of a particular company aspect. Scientific principles could be applied to analyze the problem, in other words, this steps transforms the problem understanding form layman’s perception to a more detailed one. It is in this stage that several professionals are consulted to give scientific causes and remedies of the problems. This step can also be accomplished by interviewing the top management team in a specific field or department, for instance, social counselors or therapists may engage dialogue by the top management team to analyze a specific social or management problem in the organization. The third step is arranging the problems in the order of their priority. The most important goal of any organization or business is to make profit. The state governor thought the company is not doing well, hence the option to privatize it. This might see the company make $250,000 annual profit. This helps to deal with the most critical problems then handle the rest while the company operates. It requires skilled and experienced professionals to determine which problems are more critical than the rest. Research indicates that this step require workers who have been in a certain organization for quite a long time. This is because they have good experience on Company’s operations, hence it is always important to retain two to five old workers in every department. This step requires deep understanding of a company’s goals and objectives. This stage may also compel the management team to review company’s records to ascertain how previous similar problems were dealt with. The fourth step involves using proven scientific methods to solve the problem in question. The State will apply proven economic principles in the transition/ privatization. According to the governor, the best alternative is to privatize the DMV. The principles have to consider the current workers; hence the governor promised that they will be employed in other companies but same department and position. Furthermore, the state will continue to provide the company with software, hardware and other professionals. Some proven yard sticks or models could be used to pick the best alternative (Shapira, 2002). For instance, economic alternatives could be vetted using present and future value yard sticks. Currently, there are computer models/ programs that require the user to type in the problem in computer language then give the possible outcome. It is worth noting that selection of incompetence alternative could lead to both financial and time wastage. There are other factors to be considered in this stage, for instance, the company competency in terms of available human resource and finance. It would be unwise to select an alternative that would engage the company in debt. The fifth step is to put the selected alternative in to practice; this would be the actual privatization. Bidding information would be passed to the public. Biding documents would be reviewed by specialized and experienced professionals before the best bidder is awarded the opportunity to own the DMV after relevant payments The six steps involve testing the suitability of the previous steps. There are several methods to measure the results of a certain action in the company. The most common method is the comparison method. Here the previous status (before privatization) is compared with the current status (after the privatization). It is worth noting that problems may require a longer duration before some changes can be noticed. The questions should touch on the previous situation (before any action taken) and the current the situation (after some action has been taken). Interviewing the entire company workers may not be applicable due to time and economic implication; hence the entire population can be divided into some quotas. Departments could form the best quotas. Each department should have its representative to be interviewed. The management may continue implementing the alternatives or redesign the alternatives to achieve the best results. The workers should be interviewed to ascertain whether all are satisfied in their new work places. If no, the State should take appropriate actions to honor its promises with regard to the privatization deals. The seventh step: Redesigning an alternative means programming a certain model with specific inputs. This may happen if the $250,000 annual target is not realized on privatization. This step helps the management team to fix some important elements that were never considered in the initial considerations. However, this step is time and resource wasting. For instance, the contract between the State and private investor might be binding hence limited to any changes or alterations. A good plan should not undergo this step. The questions asked in this stage are, ‘What factors or actions may improve the DMV situation, in terms of annual profit’. The eighth step involves results generation and recommendations. This is the ultimate stage; all the above steps are followed to yield results. This is the most elaborate step because the State will be engaged in ascertaining the outcome of privatization. For a success, results/outcome should always be more valuable compared to the input. The question in this stage is, ‘what is the actual output in relation with the input or the foregone’. The ninth step: Putting all the above steps in record then communicating the result to the company’s workers among other stakeholders. This entails publishing the privatization deal to the public. The information can be gazette, uploaded on State websites among other communication modes. Furthermore, each worker can be issued handouts with the details of the privatization. However, the company should ensure that its secret methods or privatization deals are licensed or patented to give them all rights an avoid imposters (Browne & Keeley, 2012). Special information should be kept in the company custody to ensure their competitor does not learn of such special skills or designs. The records should then be kept for future references in case the company experiences such problems in the future. At the company may reward workers who contributed greatly to the company success. This could be through salary increment and promotions among others. Research indicates that such motivations improve workers’ productivity. The final step is to monitor and evaluate the above results. Here the company may engage in either self assessments or external audits. Self assessment is where the outcome is verified by the company workers while external audit implies consulting professionals from other companies to validate the results of a certain action meant to solve specific problem in the company. The State should compare the audit results before and after privatization and set other targets. Here the management team can assess their problem solving and team work skills among others. The questions in this stage are ‘what are the causes as well as solutions of certain problems?’ and ‘How has the solved problem benefited the company’ among others. References Eric, J. (2003). Decision Making and problem solving. USA: Wiley. Shapira, Z. (2002). Organizational Decision making. USA: Cambridge University. Browne, M.N., & Keeley, S.M. (2012). Asking the right questions: A guide to critical thinking (10th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Read More