Decision Making Process

Decision making is crucial to a positive outcome in business strategy. Sometimes, the basis for success or failure depends on the decisions that have been made along the way. While we don't always pay attention to the specific textbook decision making process, these steps ultimately should be followed to aid in the goal of making the right decisions.

The first step in the decision making process is to identify and define the problem. This is probably the most difficult of the steps because you must be able to reveal the actual problem. Sometimes this may be hard to identify the true problem and not a symptom of the problem. In the recruiting and professional development group in which I work, we are currently re-organizing the way in which we handle the recruitment for the company. The problem was the fact that we did not have an up-to-date method of recruiting - i.e. an online application process, and electronic method of tracking those applicants. This problem was defined by upper HR management in conjunction with the manager of our group as well as others directly involved with the recruiting for the company. It was decided that we needed an upgrade in our systems.

The second step in the decision making process is to generate and evaluate alternative solutions. There are many different software programs and web-based programs that could have been chosen to alleviate our archaic process of recruiting and managing candidates. This is the step in the process in which I and others in the lower positions were not fully included. We were not consulted in the alternate solutions. I cannot say 100% that there were in fact alternatives discussed. If I were in the upper management positions, I believe that the lower level employees who will be using the new program should be consulted in this decision. We are after all, the employees who will be using this system on a daily basis.

Make a decision. This is the third step in the decision making process and a big step as well. To make a firm decision on something is also putting a once idea into motion. The decision was made to use a web-based system to now manage and track our applicants. While I believe that this decision to implement a new recruiting process was a good one, we again were not involved in this step of the decision making process.

The implementation of the decision is the fourth step in the decision making process. We were and still are given extensive training on the new program and constant 'tweaks' in the system are addressed in a timely manner. The training is extremely important for employees that are new to the system, and the firm has done a great job at making sure the implementing has been a smooth transition

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