Decision-Making Model Paper

"Decision-Making Model Paper"

We all make decisions of varying importance every day, so the idea that decision making can be a rather sophisticated art may at first seem strange. However, studies have shown that most people are much poorer at decision making than they think. An understanding of what decision making involves, together with a few effective techniques, will help produce better decisions.

Problem/Situation

Hodges Bend Middle School decided to have a Career Day for the 8th grade students, parents, faculty and staff. In order to have a successful career day we had to organize committees which included principals, teachers and parents. The committees consisted of a chairperson, hospitality, and recruitment of speakers, budget committee and selection of sponsors. We encountered several problems because of lack of communication and failure of the committees to do their jobs effectively. The recruitment team neglected to secure speakers in a timely manner, didn't let them know time, place, date of the event and didn't let the other team members know what they needed to do to help the team have speakers for the event, while complaining to others who had no desire to work on the event. As a result of the confusion among some of the member stop assisting with the program and dropped out, while others tried to fill in the gaps that were left by the none working members. The coordinator was put into the position of making some decision about how to make the team cohesive in a two-week period of time and still have a productive event.

Critical Thinking

Paul, Binker, Jensen, and Kreklau (1990) have developed a list of thirty five dimensions of critical thought, however for my paper I am going to use the following seven thoughts

* Exercising fair-mindedness

* Developing intellectual good faith or integrity

* Clarifying issues, conclusion, or beliefs

* Evaluating the credibility of sources of information

* Analyzing or evaluating actions or policies

* Comparing and contrasting ideals with actual practice

* Recognizing contradictions

Decision Making

In Decision Making Techniques Harris, R. (1998) states there are four major benefits to planning for decision making and three levels for decision making that will allow someone to effectively to use decision making as a successful tool for any situation.

Planning for Decision Making

1. Planning allows the establishment of independent goals - The vision, which will shape the decision, is set apart from surrounding events. Decisions are not made only as reactions to external stimuli.

2. Planning provides a standard of measurement - A plan provides something to measure against, so that you can discover whether or not you are achieving or heading toward your goals.

3. Planning converts values to action - When you are faced with a decision, you can consult your plan and determine which decision will help advance your plan best.

4. Planning allows limited resources to be committed in an orderly way - Budgets, time, effort, manpower-all are limited. Their best use can be made when a plan governs their use.

Decision Levels

1. Strategic - Here a decision concerns general direction, long term goals, philosophies and values.

2. Tactical - Tactical decision support strategic decisions. They tend to be medium range, medium significance, with moderate consequences.

3. Operational - These are everyday decisions, used to support tactical decisions. They are often made with little thought and are structured. Their impact is immediate, short term, short range, and usually low cost.

Application

When using critical thinking and decision making techniques one must have a goal/situation in mind. Our strategic plan was to have an 8th grade Career day at a local middle school. In our planning phase we established committees of teachers, parents and community leaders. The groups were divided in to subgroups that reported to the chairperson. The goals and responsibilities of the subgroups weren't clearly stated when forming the groups thus causing confusion the within group.