Posts Tagged ‘Problem Solving’

Leader’s Dilemma – Problem Solving and Decision Making (Part 2)

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

As promised, here are some techniques, which can help you to structure your Decision Making:

Prioritization – A system of ranking, which helps you to choose more easily. It works best for recurring decisions such as allocation of resources or customer service procedures. I t is not as good for one time decisions.

Check List – This technique proves very handy in simple decision making, involving few alternatives. You can simply tick off the factors that are acceptable or unacceptable, and then choose the best alternative.

Brain Storming: It encourages members of a group to let their mind wander to find creative ways to solve problems and develop alternatives. Some one has to facilitate the session and record the ideas. This technique also helps to generate lots of new ideas.

Pay offs – When one main decision is needed you can use a pay off method to help you structure your options in a clear and concise manner.

Decision Trees – When multiple decisions are to be made at different times, when a situation cannot be managed by a pay off method, Decision Trees become indispensable. It is used for tracking complicated decisions and their effects on subsequent decisions.

There are dozens of decision making techniques available

I have just listed a few to draw your attention towards the methodology. No one technique is best; each has its limitations and is applicable in certain situations. You might have to use a couple of techniques in tandem. If any of these interest you, I suggest you please consult many instructional texts that are available, and then integrate them into your decision making process.

Remember- Leaders get paid to solve problems correctly and make the right decisions.

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Leader’s Dilemma – Problem Solving and Decision Making (Part 1)

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Which is the most important skill required by a leader?

I think Problem Solving and Decision Making relate to every thing you do as a leader. You will always be judged as to how effective a leader you are by your ability to solve problems and make decisions.

Why do Problem Solving and Decision Making Skills overlap?

It is strange but true, problem solving and decision making skills are pretty closely related. Their actions and their processes frequently overlap.

Let us take an example – If your customer satisfaction is dropping, what will you do?

It is a problem right! Solving a problem initially involves finding out possible solutions…  You would immediately start thinking of all the solutions that could fix the problem.

This could be:

- Hiring new customer service professional or

- You might think to increase the frequency of training.

Now the moment you start looking at the solutions, you start looking into your decision making techniques

You start thinking, which alternatives to accept and implement. So decision making and problem solving are quite closely related and they can often overlap.

Therefore, I am going to give you a set of five questions to follow

This might help you in your process of decision making. You will have to come up with a structure to your problem solving process to explore and analyze the problems, so that you can look at the solutions.  However, you can best do this by exploring and understanding some of the major issues involved in making decisions by asking the following five questions:

  1. What are the time constraints?
  2. Who will participate in the decision making process
  3. Will this be recurring or one time decision?
  4. What are the components of this decision?
  5. What techniques will be used to make this decision?

Remember – Leaders get paid to solve problems correctly and make the right decisions.


There are several techniques available to help you structure your decisions. In part two of the post, I am going to list some decision making techniques…

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