Dmd Individual Assignment

DMD INDIVIDUAL ASSIGMENT – T17-26

PART A – A BRIEF SUMMARY

I decided to wait 1 month before writing my comments and impressions on the DMD class to allow my mind to set all the new concepts that I learned through the course. It is difficult to judge on changes in the short run and a few weeks are necessary to better evaluate after putting in practices the concepts we learned. When thinking about one adjective to describe the course the first one coming to my mind is “eye-opener”. It has given me a different perspective on how to approach decisions and a complete set of tools to better present the information available and from there evaluate, compare and finally decide the best path to take. In addition to the best path and decision, it provides a way to compare between options and therefore visualize the existing gap among all of them.

A consequence of the analytical process I went through is that it made obvious the decision making process I have been using was wrong. It doesn’t mean all decisions were wrong but, it gives evidences, that some of them could have been better taken and supported if using the tools or not always based on objective elements but rather based on subjectivity and without the visibility allowing for proper comparison among all available options.

After getting over this fact, I’m thinking what the best way would be to extend some of the techniques I learned into my organization so when people faces situations with multiple possible outcomes they can use those techniques. That would help them to adopt a more analytical approach and also gain confidence when presenting the case and conclusions to a broader audience that might challenge them on the decision making process.

After testing in my professional environment different techniques and tools, I came to the conclusion that Decision Trees are my preferred approach whenever the case can be solved in this manner (basically involving expected monetary value as main decision driver), or at least this is the best starting point to nail down the options to 1 or 2 when too many options and decisions are possible. The main benefits I see are:

1. Visual representation: it is extremely simple and clear to follow so it is easy to use in meetings and project it embedded into a presentation.
2. Easy to explain and understand: anyone with very basic notions and explanations can understand the process and look at the differences between options. I needed around 15 minutes to explain to an audience of 10 people how to read a simple tree that I made up only for training purposes. I realized it was the easiest way to get people understands the basics before moving into the real case of the meeting.
3. Easy to build: I also tried to, instead of bringing it ready, have a small team creating the decision tree in a white board and from there guiding them into the excel tool. And the result is that it was pretty simple and actually made a few, actually most of them, participants to buy and like the method to a point they asked me to go deeper in the explanation of the concepts, I felt like I was becoming a “missionary “ within my teams…

Besides the decision tree tool I want to comment on a topic I found very interesting although I couldn’t find a use in my professional life, the anchor effect. However I think knowing this concept and its effects are very useful in real life. What I found most interesting about it is the unconscious effect it has on the mind of people and what consequences it produces. I found astonishing the results of the studies on this subject therefore putting my-self to think about in how many cases in my life I have been submitted to this technique without really knowing about it. I will try to keep my mind aware about this technique so I can, hopefully, identify when in use and better manage the impact.

As a conclusion, the course has been very useful for me and what I really like about it is how applicable to real life (both personal and professional) it is.

PART B – AN APPLICATION

The application of a method I selected for this exercise is a current real case I’m experiencing and is related to a combination of personal and professional choices which, contrary to what I detailed in the “Part A – A Brief Summary”, is not going to be represented using a Decision Tree but rather by following an “Even Swap” method. The reason for that is for me to practice with a tool I couldn’t find a real application yet since finishing the course.

The decision, as previously mentioned, has several alternatives as well as objectives. First I would like to start with a quick presentation about current status and then presenting the alternatives. Finally I will describe the objectives and go through the “even swap” methodology.

Background and current status: I’m currently working for Gamesa Wind China (100% foreign own company – Spain) in Tianjin. I signed a 3 year expat contract that will come to expiration in June 2016. Through my network I have been offered 3 possibilities for my career that are detailed below.

The first step was to identify the alternatives and the objectives. The alternatives are very clear but for the objectives I spent quite some time grouping and reducing the number to focus on the most important ones so I can manage the process.

ALTERNATIVES: all to remain within the same corporation but either by changing location or position or both.

1. Extend my expat contract and continue in my current position for 2 more years (June 2018) in China (Tianjin)
2. Finish my assignment in China as per the contract and then take over my peer holding the same position for Europe division (Spain)
3. Shorten my contract (leave China by end of 2015) and move to the Gamesa division in Brazil (Sao Paolo) as Industrial Director. This is a promotion because my current position actually reports to this figure in China.

OBJECTIVES: I identified the following groups and then added a 7th objective at the crossing of both professional and personal objectives: Balance between both

• Professional:

• Career Evolution: aligned with career path, appealing, challenging…Staying in China will bring no evolution while moving to Europe will bring some small improvement related to the network extension. Moving to Brazil is by far the greatest improvement in career evolution.
• Compensation: does the alternative represent an improvement in compensation. Represented as percentage increase or decrease versus current compensation => alternative 1 (China) will be the “0” level.
• Learning/growth: how the alternative will help me gain experience and allow me to grow as a professional => similar evaluation as for “career evolution”

• Personal:

• Security and Safety (individual, food, water, environment…). Again using China as the 0 level the numbers are obtained from my evaluation. Spain (this is my home country) has a nice combination of security and safety but Brazil on the other hand faces severe criminality issues.
• Learning (foreign culture, language…). Going back to Spain will not provide any benefit for my family about learning about other cultures while staying in China will allow us to deepen our knowledge about the language and its culture. The bigger change comes from moving to Brazil as this will be a totally new culture and language so I consider it to be a great plus.
• Quality of life (distance home, housing, weather, social life…): it seems obvious that I will have the greater quality of life back at home and then comparing China and Brazil, the proximity of cultures with Brazilian people (mix of cultures with extremely high immigrants from the south of Europe, including Spain) will be an improvement compared to China but not as good as in Spain

• Balance between Professional and Personal life: what would be the impact in terms of equilibrium between my personal and professional life. Staying in China is established as the “0” level. Alternative 2 is slightly better because of the proximity to my hometown and therefore my family however Alternative 3 (Brazil) will most probably represent a reduction due to the increase in work load and learning effort and time.

There is no alternative that completely dominates the others so no can be discarded. However, I realized that on the professional aspect all the objectives are better in alternative 3 so I simplified the table by grouping all professional objectives into one by adding the differences in that specific group. The result is as follows: