Introduction
A department manager in the big company invited all employees to take the Clifton StrenghsFinder test that would determine the naturally recurring patterns in their behavior. This paper will explore different decision-making approaches that could positively impact the performance of the two employees with varied dominant themes.
Fairness and Harmony
Fairness and Harmony were among the top five Signature Themes of the first employee. The process of decision making can be described to him as follows:
From the viewpoint of human interaction, every decision a manager has to make can have the consequence of either increasing well-being of other people in a company or diminishing it. Decision making is an inherent component of the managerial process that is directed at the achievement of the company’s objectives. Successful managers change the organizational environment through the process of decision making that incorporates the means for strengthening cooperation among employees.
The scenario for the First Employee
A special operations division in a training services organization is facing a 15 percent increase in costs of their services. The responsibilities of the division include hiring seminar leaders, registering clients, and managing customer inquiries, among others. The operation has recently moved to the new and expensive quarters, and the price of renting facilities has almost doubled. Both internal clients and program managers have raised their concerns about the future cost increase. As a result, the director of the division has to decide on the proper course of action that would save his division from losing clients.
Considering that fairness and harmony are the key themes for the first employee, the cooperation approach to the decision-making process is recommended for the scenario described above. The employee engaged in the process of choosing an appropriate strategy for the balancing of a division’s budget places emphasis on the importance of justice in social interactions. Therefore, while making a decision on the possible bargaining strategy, he should have a preference for fairness rather than for maximizing expected gain. Considering that decision making is often separated by time from cooperative exchanges between two parties, to produce the best results, an employee needs to engage in a self-regulation process.
A manager of the training services company should initiate cooperation of the director of a special operations division with another employee who scores higher on the Analytical theme. Thus, each employee will be able to make a significant contribution in the area of their greatest strengths while helping each other develop different themes.
Arranger and Communication
The two highest-scoring themes of the second employee were Arranger and Communication. The process of decision making can be described to her as follows:
The decision-making process is a process of evaluation of possible alternative solutions as well as all consequences and risks related to a particular decision in order to meet the company’s objectives. Decision-makers have to balance potential gains and losses to come up with an optimal solution for a particular situation. It can be complicated by the fact that in real-life situations, probabilities of outcomes cannot always be measured. Therefore, a rational approach has to be taken to the process of making a decision where uncertainty and risk factors can vary in degree.
Scenario for the Second Employee
The organization is engaged in the project of developing a cloud application. It involves three teams of specialists: a management team, an in-house development team, and a vendor team. Due to the loss of communication between some members of those teams, at a certain point in the development stage, the development team started a key activity without informing the head of the management team about its initiation. Afterward, the two teams moved to another cycle of the project without realizing that the development team did not back up some files necessary for the restoration of key elements of the project. As a result, most of the crucial files were missing, and the available backups were more than two weeks old.
The rational decision-making approach is recommended to the scenario described above. Gathering information about all sequential phases of the application development might help the manager to pinpoint a specific moment at which the crisis occurred. It should be done with the concurrent evaluation of all possible avenues for solving the problem. The best decisional approach should be supported by gathering information about the issue. Therefore, restoring proper communication between the teams might help the manager determine a viable solution for the crisis. In this particular scenario, the employee responsible for the key communication between three teams would find out that the vendor team places automatic backup data for all sequential phases of their client’s project on a cloud server.
The manager of the organization can build a network of different strengths in the employees of each team by developing varied themes in their management. The workers’ engagement in the process of finding their talents can be greatly supported by the positive example from the leaders.