About decision making

1.  Decision Making Overview
A decision can be defined as a course of action purposely chosen from a set of alternatives
to achieve organizational or managerial objectives or goals. Decision making process is
continuous and indispensable component of managing any organization or business activities.
Decisions are made to sustain the activities of all business activities and organizational functioning.
Decisions are made at every level of management to ensure organizational or business goals are
achieved. Further, the decisions make up one of core functional values that every organization
adopts and implements to ensure optimum growth and drivability in terms of services and or
products offered.
Framework for Decision Making
 Leadership, management, and decision making - An overview of the role decision making
plays in management and leadership with a specific focus on managing change.
 Theories for making decisions - How should we and how do we make decisions? Gain
insight and survey models from neuroscience, psychology, and operations research.
 Decision making and knowledge - See how decisions relate to problem solving, critical
thinking, systems thinking, innovation management, change management, and knowledge
management. Learn how connected decisions capture reusable knowledge than can be
improved over time.
 Styles of decision making - Explore rational, intuitive and emotional decision making styles
to learn their strengths and weaknesses. Learn to identify personal decision making
approaches.
 Decision making process - Learn the essential elements of a decision making process and
why having a process can be important for both individual and team effectiveness.
 Decision making techniques - Get an overview of common techniques, such as multi-
criteria, decision trees, pro-con, conjoint analysis, etc., along with typical applications.
 Decision value and prioritization exercise - Larger organizations use this exercise to
generate high value opportunities in a single session.
 Group decision making - Make meetings more effective using collaborative decision
making to get things done. Choose the collaboration style needed to achieve decision goals.
 Decision timing - When is it time to decide? Discover common errors with timing and the
information needed to choose effectively.
 Decision speed - Learn how complexity and decision loops work to slow decision making
and what can be done to increase speed.
 Decision support tools and software - Survey of decision making tools and how they
support decision making.
 Decision automation - Understand topics such as Predictive Analytics, Big Data, business
rules and trends in machine decision making.
 Risk and opportunity analysis - Understand how to objectively evaluate and accommodate
risk and opportunity in the decision making process.
 Ethical decision making - Distinguish personal morals from organizational ethics and guide
organizational decision making to meet company core values.
 Mistakes, biases, procrastination, and common decision making traps - Avoid and
reduce common decision errors through awareness and simple strategies provided in this
module.
 Decision influence versus manipulation - Often decisions that impact us are made by
someone else. This training explores positive ways to influence decision making, as well as
ways to detect and avoid manipulation.

2.  Evaluation of decision quality - Decision results may not be known for years. Learn to
assess decision making quality before and after the outcomes.