Making Decisions and Assumptions

Making Decisions and Assumptions

Being promoted from a front-line supervisor to a senior manager, making good decisions will be a key responsibility of the new role. As a supervisor, frequent routine decisions have been made, but the impact of the decisions carry greater weight to the overall company and its employees when senior management makes them. Therefore, gaining a thorough understanding of the impact the decision making process has on the entire organization is going to be vital to the new position.

When determining if a manager is making a good decision, there are several elements the manager should take under consideration to ascertain they are making a good decision. Identifying which decisions are made and deciding how they are shared with staff, is almost as important as the decision itself (Kisel 2010). The first important step is for the manager to define the problem and the factors that influence it (WPS). Next they should evaluate the alternative solutions in order to determine which factors are most important and the proper priority is given to each. Each alternative solution is critically analyzed based on its merits and drawbacks and each alternative strength and weakness become evident when they are compared with the criteria established in previous steps (WPS). Once the list is generated and the alternative solution is weighed and identified, the manager should select the best alternative based on their findings, hence leading to making good decisions.

When managers are faced with the task of making critical or key decisions in an organization, there are assumptions that are related to the nature of those decisions. I work for a company that decided to outsource our helpdesk call center to India with a two year minimum contract. The assumption that was made surrounding this decision was that it would be cost effective and the same level of service if not better would be supplied to our customers. Because of language barrier issues and the outsource company not having a full grasp of the structure of our company multiple issues and complaints arise. Namely, we have a division of wealth clients that get top notch treatment because of the amount of money they generate for our company. Many of the wealth clients were not given the preferential treatment they were used to and some left our bank. Additionally, our customer demographic consisted heavily of southern English speaking people. Most of the clients made complaints they could not understand the customer service reps from India. As a result, the company lost money due to the poor service and customer service people were receiving as they would leave our clientele, and they lost money buying out the contract to return that function back to the US.

General Motors made terrible decisions about which cars to bring to market (Davenport 2009). When an automobile company makes the assumption that the