Decision Making

In the past, I have spent years of painful trial and error learning to make right choices over a course of time. So far I have made decisions related to various facets of life, starting from selecting a major in undergrad to choosing a career that involved obtaining appropriate information and being aware of numerous factors that influenced my decisions. When analyzing the decision making models I consider not only major decisions, such as career change, relationship but the whole process I use for making decisions everyday.

In the first two weeks of this course I have been learning about making decisions using models which are already tested and found effective in high-level business organizations. However, the emphasis is on what actually works and understanding the decision we make has consequences either positive or negative. By improving our decision making confidence to ensure the positive consequences out weigh the negative ones.

Out of four type of decision making models such as bounded rationality, incremental model and coalitional model and garbage can model, most of my decision making process aligned with incremental model. I make small decisions step by step moving cautiously towards a bigger goal. When it comes to making decision in teams I believe rational decision making model works best as it is based around cognitive judgment of pros and cons of various options, but is time consuming and requires a lot of preparation in terms of information gathering, so it works well in team.

It allows necessary emotion and skepticism to be brought into what would otherwise be purely rational decisions. It opens up the opportunity for creativity within Decision Making. The technique also helps, for example, persistently pessimistic people to be positive and creative. Those using rational decision making models are obviously adopting and analytical decision making style which is self evident.