Organizational Management : Decision Making

Decision making is the topic for this part of our guide to organizational management…

Effective managers are tasked with making decisions ranging from large to small on a daily basis. An effective organization employs managers who are problem-solvers and who can make good decisions constantly.

It is critical to first prioritize issues and problems based on the issues potential effect on the organization. Those that stand to have the greatest impact should be dealt with first, and all problems need to be addressed in a systematic way prior to a decision being made.

Knee-jerk decisions can be harmful, and to avoid them, one must gather and assess all information available about an issue. It is risky to rely on just one source when collecting information and facts as the source may be biased. Further, only verifiable information should be used to make a determination.

Collecting information in order to obtain a complete understanding of the issue is only the first step, however. Once the information is available, then it is wise to brainstorm different solutions and possible options in order to get more than one perspective. Such options can start out as wide-ranging, and then can be narrowed down to fit the scope of the problem.

Having identified a set of options and solutions, feedback and suggestions on them, along with alternatives, should be sought from consultations with others. For the most part, group decisions (particularly where the group contains people who the end decision will affect) are preferable to those made by individuals as a pool of knowledge, skills and experience can be drawn upon.

There exists a risk that the individual actually making a decision may be too close to the issue to render a reasonable solution, and that is where some tools, methods of analysis and different techniques can be very beneficial. Some of these include Pareto Analysis; Paired Comparison Analysis; Grid Analysis; PMI; Six Thinking Hats; Starbursting; and Decision Trees. These methods will not provide a hard and fast decision for you, but will guide you in the right direction, using more of a scientific approach.

The final step will be to weigh the positive benefit of each proposed solution against any negative impact such decision may incur, as few solutions can be implemented without some draw-back. The best solution will be the one that offers the most positive benefit, with the least likelihood of negative side-effects.

Organizational Management 101 : How To Make Plans

In this installment of our guide to organizational management we look at organizational planning…

There is no substitute for proper planning within an organization. The initial plan will generally be a broad organization-wide plan that sets out high-level goals. These can then be made more specific to address different levels of the organization in order to provide clear expectations for each department and employee.

It begins with the highest authorities in the organization assessing where the organization currently is, where it needs to be and what work, programs, and organizational growth (over a period of time (six months, a year, a five years, etc.) are necessary to achieve where it wants to be.

The organization must be divided up into manageable chunks such as divisions or subdivisions and separate goals must be developed for each. The finance division, for example, could be split up into international sales and payroll; and the human resources division would include such sub-divisions as recruitment and employee training.  Objectives must be quantified into clear objectives such as, increase sales by 15%, reduce fourth quarter costs, or improve employee retention. These objectives can be developed from past performance indicators, the natural expected growth of the company, external trends in the industry or market, and even comparisons with companies that provide a similar product or service.

The goals and objectives are the starting point for building a list of specific tasks that will need to be completed in order to reach the goal. The tasks should be laid out in logical sequence and a time-frame for the completion of each determined before they are assigned to particular departments or individuals, who will then be made responsible to complete them.  Review dates should be set and communicated, performance management plans developed, and requisite procedures generated to guide the process.

Where this process is thoroughly addressed, it should result in every person within the organization having a clear goal, represented by a to-do list that includes each ones direct and indirect contributions to the overall objective of the company. It pays to remember, however, that there is a fine line between providing employees with challenging work that encourages them to perform at their best, but that does not overwhelm and demoralize them.  While there are no guarantees of success, proper planning can certainly decrease the odds of failure.

Organizational Management Guide : Communication Structure

In this installment of our guide to organizational management we look at organizational communications…

The standard patterns of communications are chain, wheel, star, and all-channel, each of which can influence the speed with which decisions are made, their accuracy, and ensuring that the key stakeholders have a satisfactory outcome based on the decision.

Representing the chain type of communications would be a hierarchy, and a good example can be found in the top-down communication structure of the military – a very formal example. Wheel type communications are generally those found within an autocratic (one-man rule) organization and seeks little or no input from others.

The star is similar to the basic formal structure of many organizations, whereby people within a group communicate (information flowing in both directions) with a few other people in the group but not all of them. The all-channel network is analogous to the free-flow of communication in a group that encourages all of its members to become involved in group decision processes.

It’s thought that in patterns with positions located centrally (such as the wheel and the star), an organization quickly develops around the people occupying these central positions. In such patterns, the organization is more stable and errors in performance are lower than in patterns having a lower degree of centrality, such as the all-channel. However, the morale of members in high centrality patterns is relatively low and this could, in the long run, lower the accuracy and speed of such networks.

A group’s morale can be greatly improved where communications are divided more uniformly across the board. Networks that employ such methods of communication take advantage of the experience, knowledge and skills of more people, allowing for a wider range of possibility than those entities that allow decisions to be made by those in a higher, more central capacity.

Which pattern is best for a particular organization is dependent on it’s size, the speed and accuracy at which it must reach decisions, and it’s room for error in judgment. However, the fact that the majority of organizations operate using the star pattern indicates that, in practice, it returns the best all-round results.