I thought we’d end the week with a little exercise – perhaps one of the most thought provoking yet.

Imagine that you work for a company that, for whatever reason, had a workforce that consisted primarily of white males. Throughout the years you have managed to change the face of the workforce and the company now has a significant number of female, African American, Asian, and Hispanic workers.

Your organisation is experiencing severe financial difficulties and you will need to lay off about 1/3 of your 1,000 member workforce. If your plan works you will be able to hire them all back in approximately 6-9 months.

What will you do in order to:

• Choose which employees to lay off while not changing the diversity you’ve worked to hard to create?
• Communicate the decision to lay off a significant number of employees to the rest of the team? and
• Make sure your team understands the change is temporary in nature?

It’s a tall order, for sure. How will you handle the decision making process?

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training Courses

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

Last week, when we began discussing the various components of the decision making process, I mentioned that one of the attributes a manager needed to have when making decisions was tunnel vision (or, really, a lack thereof).

Think of it this way – a tunnel is very narrow. When you’re in a tunnel you have very few options – either back up or move forward to find the nearest exit. Decision making, when done with tunnel vision, is very similar. Managers with tunnel vision find that they have very few alternatives to choose from when it’s time to make the final decision.

Why would a manager have tunnel vision? He might be biased towards or against a situation. He may also have a limited frame of reference, or experience, from which to draw from. He may be completely unfamiliar with the situation to begin with, making it difficult for him to even think of different alternatives.

Do you have tunnel vision? If so, what will you do to change the way you see things?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training Courses

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

No two managers are alike. Every single manager you meet will come from a different background on both a personal and professional level. Each will bring a unique set of attributes to the table, making his or her decision making process slightly different from the next. They will all, however, bring attributes that fall into the following categories:

• The type of decision making model he uses
• The type of priority setting system he has
• His ability to properly time decisions
• Tunnel vision
• Previous commitments
• Creativity

Over the next few days we’re going to explore each of these attributes in order to determine how they affect a manager’s ability to make a strong decision. I think you’ll be surprised at how each of the above can affect the way a person thinks, both indiviually and combined with the other attributes.

Until next time, think about the type of manager you are. What process do you usually go through when you need to make an important decision?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

As a manager you are, of course, responsible for making decisions on a number of different levels. You’ve probably already figured out that your interpersonal and information management roles involve making decisions, but you have a number of other responsibilities as well.

You have four main roles as a decision maker within your organisation. They are to act as an entrepreneur, to handle disturbances, to allocate resources, and to negotiate.

As an entrepreneur you are responsibel for finding new ideas that will enhance the way your team works. Once you’ve developed the idea you must implement it and continuously review it to ensure your strategies are sound. You’ll need to know when to make changes should they become necessary.

The handling of disturbances within your team or department are also your responsibility. Disturbances may include anything from broken equipment to scheduling conflicts or two team members not getting along. You need to make decisions that will stop or avoid anything that will decrease your team’s productivity.

When your team or department receives new resources they’ll come to you first. It’s your job to decide who needs those resources and allocate them properly. These may include access to training, funding for new equipment, and evens upplies.

Last, but certainly not least, you are a negotiator. You are responsible for working with suppliers, other management members, and your employees to make agreements that will enhance your performance.

Managers are obviously bestowed with a significant amount of authority and if you find yourself in a new management position you’ll have to be careful not to abuse that position. The more skilled you are at using your decision making skills for good the more productive, efficient, and successful your team will be.

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Manager Training

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

One of the most important parts of the decision making process is proper planning and goal setting. Goals are incredibly important to the success of any organisation, and for good reason. They serve four main purposes:

1. Goals provide direction – whether for individuals, teams, or an entire organisation. Why does your company exist if not to meet some sort of goal? Do you want to make sales, increase revenues, or build your client list.
2. Setting goals leads to proper planning which leads to meeting goals and setting new ones. It sounds silly, but if you have a goal you should strive to meet it. If you meet your goals you should be prepared to move on to the next one.
3. Goals tend to motivate people to work harder. They’re even better at motivating people if they know they will be rewarded for meeting their goals.
4. Setting goals will allow you and your organisation to evaluate your processes. If you set a goal that you are unable to meet you’ll need to find out why it was unattainable. This process will give you the knowledge necessary to make changes to your processes and procedures.

We’re going to spend some time over the next week discussing decision making, planning, and goal setting. We’ll look at different aspects of each, how they relate to each other, and how you can use these skills to improve productivity in the workplace.

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”