A632.5.4.RB_How Protected are Your Protected Values?

How Protected are Your Protected Values?

               According to Hoch, Kunreuther, and Gunther, protected values are considered inviolable and protected from tradeoffs. They are independent of consequences, insensitive to quantity, and they are applied to acts (Hotch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001).  These characteristics of protected values inspired reflection on all the values I hold near and dear.  Three of my most protected values in no specific order are fairness, humane treatment of animals, and compassionate discipline of children.

Fairness

               Fairness and equality have long been my most highly protected values.  Growing up with sisters all close in age required my parents to ensure we all had fair and equal treatment.  If things were not fair, jealousy and anger would lead to a breakdown in communication and subsequent disharmony in the home.  This small-scale effect can be seen on a much larger scale in communities and nations. Our human history is wrought with accounts of communities brought down by injustice.  My major beliefs about fairness are as follows: The value of fairness is about the process of decision-making, not the outcome; equal rights for all and impartiality; and judgment or behavior that is free from discrimination.

               Although fairness is a value that I strive to protect, sometimes it is difficult to treat everyone equally.  This can be seen when policymakers attempt to accommodate fairness and equality for everyone.  They must try to maximize total utility or total value satisfaction (Baron & Spranca, 1997). I strive to ensure fairness at every chance and haven’t had to make many decisions where someone got the short end of the stick without later providing ample recompense for their disadvantage, however, in an extreme situation, I may reluctantly make decisions inconsistent with this protected value and not make the utilitarian decision.  For example, if a situation were to present itself and I was tasked with the decision to give the only vital organ and must choose between my son and another boy, I would not make a fair and amicable decision, I would choose in favor of my son. Because there may be situations where this protected value is not inviolable, there may be instances where my behavior is inconsistent with my protected value, I hold that fairness remains as my highest protected value because unless forced to make an unfair decision, I will not compromise when it comes to fairness for all if I can help it.

Humane Treatment of Animals

               Another protected value is the humane treatment of animals.  This value became protected more than a decade ago, owing to vast changes in American agriculture over the last century to support a growing population (Overcash, 2011).  During this time, the inhumane treatment and living conditions of animals, especially those raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s) was revealed after several undercover investigations.  Since then, there have been many insidious practices exposed, of the deplorable conditions where animals are forced to live in disease-ridden, cramped environments, pumped with hormones and antibiotics, and fed an unnatural diet.  Derived from this unfortunate reality are several beliefs I’ve established that further solidify my commitment to refuse any meat or meat products from CAFO farms.  These beliefs are derived from the RSPCA and Animal Welfare Act and adopted as our own and include; the need for all animals to be protected from pain, suffering, injury, and disease, the need for suitable food and shelter, and the need to exhibit their normal behavior patterns (RSPCA, n.d.). Each one of these beliefs is highly regarded and adhered, and to support these beliefs, we make a conscious effort to source all meat consumed by my family from local farms.  My family has visited and vetted the living conditions and diets of all farms and spoke to the farmers where we source our meat, eggs, and cheese to ensure they are free range, allowed to roam the pastures plentiful of fresh green grasses, and supplemented with grasses from their natural diets, and not administered growth hormones or antibiotics.  I am not willing to make trade-offs to not support these beliefs.  In fact, we go to great lengths to avoid store-bought packaged, processed, or frozen meat products by carefully reading all labels.  As a general rule of thumb, we typically do not dine out at restaurants, but on the rare occasion we do, we choose only vegetarian options. By not supporting CAFO farms and making a conscious effort every day to plan for the support of these beliefs, we have adapted our lives in support of the humane treatment of animals as a protected value.

Compassionate Discipline

               One of my protected values is compassionately disciplining children without exposing them to bodily harm, or emotional, psychological, or physical abuse of any kind. I don’t think children should be spanked or any form of physical pain to correct undesirable behavior.  This protected value affects my decision making each day in many ways by consciously choosing actions as an alternative to spanking and in support of a few beliefs.  I believe each person is different and learns differently, so spanking may not be the most optimal learning tool for the individual.  I believe each person reacts differently, so some people don’t respond to pain or don’t necessarily respond with the intended changed behavior.  I believe each person is affected differently so that spankings could have negative long-term consequences like anxiety disorder, OCD, or issues with self-worth.

 

               Also, another belief in support of this protected value is there are more effective, healthier, more productive ways to teach persons capable of logic and reasoning if the time is taken to instill a solid foundation of values. Values can be internalized by being reinforced through having an ongoing dialogue, getting their input on how a situation could have been better handled, reinforced with a system of accountability and transparency which further reinforces values like integrity, and following up on appropriate behavior with positive reinforcement.  The con is, perhaps you don’t have the time to have consistent teaching moments.  There are times I have been wrapped up or when I worked 50-60 hours a week and wasn’t available at each opportunity for teaching moments.  The tradeoff I made was to sit down with my children each day to review their day where they could talk openly about events and how they felt about them.  They learned to be reflective on events and how they were handled and ways they could’ve been better dealt with.

               In addition, this form of discipline does not translate or carry over to adulthood.  It is fundamentally important to raise persons shaped to approach situations proactively who will be contributing, productive, and confident members of society with a strong moral character capable of utilizing these life skills to become future leaders and teachers, not inhibited by deep fears and anxiety from past discipline. I do this by positively reinforcing good behaviors with words of affirmation and praise.  I use negative reinforcement with strong words such as “I am disappointed by your actions, what you said was hurtful, or I don’t like what I see.”  This is followed up with a quick dialogue that fosters reflection and accountability. My children will state the situation and recap in their own words, followed by how this situation could’ve been handled better.  This gives them a chance to reflect and usually illuminates where they went wrong, and they take accountability.  Taking accountability for their part results in an apology, as well as what they will do differently going forward.

               This exercise has helped me to review my protected values and see how they, as well as my many other protected values,  are the driving force and doctrine in the background of my conduct, the decisions I make each day, and the life lessons I am teaching my children.  I feel just as strongly if not stronger about them now as I did before the exercise.

References:

Baron, J., & Spranca, M. (1997). Protected values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70(1), 1-16. doi:10.1006/obhd.1997.2690

Hoch, S., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

RSPCA. (n.d.). Animal welfare act | rspca.org.uk. Retrieved Jun 29, 2019, from https://www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/endcruelty/changingthelaw/whatwechanged/animalwelfareact

Overcash, E. (2011). Overview of CAFOS and Animal Welfare Measures. Michigan State University College of Law. Retrieved Jun 28, 2019, from https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-cafos-and-animal-welfare-measures

A632.4.4.RB_Deception in Negotiations

Deception in Negotiations

During the course of negotiations, people often misrepresent information to gain at least a temporary advantage. I would like to reflect on deceptions in negotiations and describe ways I can reduce vulnerability to deception during negotiations. 

One way I will reduce deception in future negotiations is by evaluating motivations ahead of the negotiation. In my last role, I always had more success in negotiating when I knew the motives of the individuals that I was negotiating with, and this can be a very effective strategy when used in any situation with negotiations. A real-life example of this was creating labor schedules for full and part-time employees in my store at Target. As I developed a better relationship with employees, I knew what motivated them and how their motivation impacted what schedule they wanted to work and why. I used this information when determining who to schedule for what shifts, which made the scheduling process easier because I had pertinent information ahead of time that I used to get buy-in from employees. I often forget to use this tactic because I associate it with the workplace, but it can be used outside of the work environment quite effectively.

Another strategy I’d like to implement more in future negotiations is considering the setting. Even in face-to-face conversation and negotiation, the setting of the conversation can influence the behaviors of the individuals. For example, I have found in my experience that negotiating with current and future employees is much easier to do in a neutral place, as opposed to the office of the individual. A place of comfort like an office gives power to that individual, so meeting somewhere neutral and unfamiliar may help take away some of that power. I would like to do this for customer meetings and employee negotiations where meeting someplace neutral can level the playing field for all parties.

Establishing trust is another important tactic in helping to reduce deception in negotiations. At times I have let my impatience take over in negotiations and failed to take the time to build trust, but I came to realize the time taken to do so is well worth it. In my experience, once a relationship is built, and trust is established, the deception fades away and negotiations transition from a win-lose approach to a win-win, as each party slowly becomes interested in ensuring all needs are met because the negotiation is occurring between two acquaintances, not two strangers. One area I want to improve is spending time early in negotiating by building a relationship with the other party and connecting on a personal and professional level before talking about the deal at hand.

One last area that I would like to improve upon is asking direct questions during negotiations. It’s almost become a part of our culture to sugarcoat information and refrain from being so candid to not offend anyone by being too open and direct. However, this opens the door for deception and also does not help build trust between parties. Transparency and authenticity is a much more effective tool in negotiating, and these are byproducts of being direct and asking straight forward questions. I want to be bolder and ask more direct questions after building a relationship to maximize my effectiveness in negotiating.

A recent example in which I was misled in negotiation was when I purchased our home last summer. The agent we were working with was also the listing agent, so his office stood to make a double commission on the deal if it went through. I was told that we would receive a discount on the commission if I dropped my agent and was convinced that the double agent scenario would provide a greater opportunity cost benefit.  We made a deal, and his office had a very good month, but the agency took out the full 3% commission for both sides of the transaction.  Also, we found out after the sale that there were some deficiencies with the house that were not called out and were also missed by the home inspector. These were issues that the previous homeowner and listing agent would have known about, but because they wanted to offload the house as quickly as possible and maximize their profit, they withheld this information from us.

Another recent example that highlights overstating on my part was when we sold our home last year. Before the appraisal was done, I drafted a letter stating all of the upgrades that we did to the home while in our possession, and 2 of the upgrades listed were done by the previous seller immediately before we took possession of the home.  The roof was replaced, and a few windows due to damage from a recent storm and the previous owner claimed the replacements through his insurance policy.  The upgrades were significant, so it may not have had an impact on the appraisal but inspired a lot more confidence in the buyers that they were getting a great deal.   We did not include the cost of these upgrades in the selling price, as we shouldn’t have because they were done for no charge to us and included in the last appraisal.  I did not have to go too deep into explaining to them because the buyers never asked, but if confronted about them, I may have told them they were completed early on in our ownership of the home because I wanted to sell the home. The circumstances might have been different if the upgrades were not as costly. It’s interesting to see our behaviors change when we realize that overstating something could benefit us, even if we understand it to be harmless at the time. It doesn’t change the fact that we are not completely honest in an effort to better our situation.

A632.3.4.RB_Reflections on Decision Making

Reflections on Decision Making

Cognitive bias can influence everyday decision making.  This framing trap can be avoided by recognizing your assumptions, being aware of perceptions that could inadvertently anchor you so you're less focused on the most familiar, causing immediate judgment without considerable thought.  This can be seen in my decision not to switch my healthcare provider when I moved across town.  Even though there was a new healthcare system and network of new providers in closer proximity to my new home, I was familiar with the doctors, facilities, prices, choices, and customer service offered by my current provider and I didn’t want to risk losing that familiarity. Because of my cognitive bias, I chose to avoid the risk altogether and take the long drive through heavy traffic to stay with my current provider in order to keep everything the same and familiar rather than taking a risk on an unfamiliar but potentially better health care service option.  Choosing to avoid the risk can have negative effects if the alternative proves that I’m losing out by not switching.  If the reality of the alternative is a more affordable, less time consuming, better customer service, more appointment dates and times to choose from and so on, by not taking the risk, I missed out on all the potential benefits.  I have learned that I tend to be conservative and maintain normalcy instead of embracing change. I could have framed the situation differently by recognizing my assumptions and how my familiarity and emotional commitment to my providers guided and directed my attention and caused me to filter information.  I could have also gotten others input and views on their experience with the new system.  This situation has taught me that complex decision making involves uncertainty and taking risks, and doing so can be uncomfortable but may produce the best outcomes.  

The best defense against a framing trap is awareness, especially when it comes to being overconfident in our judgments.  To facilitate this, using multiple frames can surface a broader range of ideas and guard against frame blindness. At Target, leaders were encouraged to regularly rotate in various functional areas of the store working in different departments and develop relationships with people in these areas.  Part of our onboarding process was to shadow team members in each function for several weeks. Developing relationships and ongoing dialogue with the team often resulted in a broader perspective and other viewpoints as well as alternative ideas and solutions to problems. This helped leaders to experience what it’s like working in each area and to understand how each function works together and impacts the other. This facilitated a well-rounded view of the operation of the entire store as well as individual departments, especially since most decisions were made by a group of leaders and affected multiple departments and team members. This regular practice helped to avoid framing traps and helped teach me that complex decision making often involved not only teams within the store but impacted key stakeholders such as customers, the distribution center, suppliers, and corporate decision making.  Because of the high impact of decisions, risk was minimized by using multiple frames to surface broader input. 

A632.3.3.RB_ Complex Managerial Decision Making

          Complex Managerial Decision Making

          Managerial decision making can be complex, and the cascade of consequences has many effects. Reflecting on my past experience at Target, Corp., and thinking about a few processes we had in place for handling complex, multiple stakeholders, and environmental decision processes, I  consider changes that would’ve ensured the most successful process possible.

          Perhaps one of the most commonly used approaches in Target’s toolkit was used when planning for seasonal items and promotions, and it involves leadership from the stores and the distribution centers. This often happens, as you can imagine, for a retailer that has over 1,800 stores in the United States and involves many functions throughout the organization to function. When the distribution center gets its direction from Target headquarters on what inventory is involved and when it needs to ship to stores, the distribution center schedules a collaborative planning meeting with store leadership to cover the plan and assign action items that are critical to the project’s success. The key stakeholders, in this case, are store leaders, and the warehousing and outbound departments in the distribution center who are responsible for pulling and shipping the product using a just-in-time strategy. The timing and execution are critical as most Target stores have minimal space in their backrooms, so the product has to arrive in a very small delivery window in the fewest number of trailers possible. The product then has to be rushed to the store shelves in a few hours. The coordination between the distribution center, stores, and headquarters team must be accurate, well thought out, and done in a manner that minimizes risk to the store, and ultimately, the customer.  This is an excellent example of frames used in managerial decision making having many considerations. The feedback I have for this process is involving the store in the initial conversations with the headquarter teams, as this may prevent important details from being lost or miscommunicated from the distribution center. Although we were unaware of the cognitive frames at the root of our perceptions and decisions, had we thought about our frames and taken the time to understand the view from headquarters as well as the distribution centers perspective, I would’ve done a better job communicating with the distribution center to make up for the gaps in communication from headquarters.

          Another tool that Target uses for high stakes decision-making is its internal transportation management system (TMS) that helps plan effective and efficient routing of trailers to stores and supplier product to the distribution centers. This tool is especially critical to the organization because Target’s transportation expenses normally rank 2^nd highest in the organization behind payroll. This tool captures data for suppliers, store leadership, distribution centers, and the contracted carriers and relies on inputs from logistics managers for its success. The TMS ensures all routes are being covered, all trailers are being maximized, and that stores and suppliers are taking advantage of empty trailers coming back from the stores to send product to the distribution center. Trends, future plans, and upcoming changes are all communicated and shared using this tool. The TMS could be optimized even more by being fed information more real-time in an automated fashion, rather than relying on manual inputs from employees. This would save time, improve quality, and allow logistics mangers to focus on other decisions that need to be made outside of the TMS.

          In-stocks within each Target store was a popular topic starting in 2014 and still is, to a great extent, as these drive store traffic and are a strong indicator for supply chain performance. One approach that Target took to help solve for in-stock deficiencies was doing more manual scans of store shelves and inventory levels, and also involving the distribution center in the performance of the store in this category. This approach forced the store and the distribution center to make key decisions involving inventory levels, trailer deliveries, and prioritization of product in a more collaborative manner and also forced them to use more real-time data to make decisions. Weekly meetings were developed, data sharing become common, and store visits from distribution center leadership became routine as these two separate functions were being rated on the same performance factors. One change that could have improved this approach was allocating more resources to each function to exercise more freedom in piloting ideas. The stores and distribution centers were operating on budgets that left these projects and new approaches out of them. Essentially, we didn’t have the budget for it.  Because cost was a factor, and this is the frame through which we viewed our decision-making process, it didn’t allow for the freedom we needed to exercise our ideas. Our fame constrained our decisions. The thought processes and decision-making process would have improved and been more streamlined if we were not constrained to such a tight budget.  

A632.2.3.RB_Sheena Iyengar: How to Make Choosing Easier_Kristina Kemp

Sheena Iyengar: How to Make Choosing Easier

          In her Ted talk, “how to make choosing easier,” Sheena Iyengar discusses techniques for mitigating the problem of choice overload.  She gives us four ways we can make our choices easier.

-Cut the number of choices (less is more). Get rid of the extraneous redundant options.  People can get overwhelmed when there are too many choices, and this could result in a negative experience (Iyengar, 2012).  For me personally, I get anxiety and get confused.  A personal example is when choosing new colors to paint the interior of our home.  Sherwin Williams has numerous color family options and numerous options within each color family and shade.  I ended up making a quick decision on a color that looked pleasant even though it wasn’t the best choice for my space since color looks different in different homes and in different rooms.  I could’ve improved my ability to decide by narrowing down the color choices to 2-3 colors and bringing samples home to see how each looked inside each room.  By doing this, I could’ve saved a significant amount of time and stress and could’ve been more satisfied with the overall experience and the color chosen.  Research shows that if you’re surrounded by an abundance of options, you typically end up less satisfied with your final decision than if you’d been given fewer options in the first place (Krochow, E., 2018).

-Concretization or, make it real.  In order for people to understand the differences between choices, they have to be able to understand the consequences associated with each choice and that the consequences need to be felt in a vivid, more concrete way.  In other words, to make the abstract concrete so one can feel the consequences of their decision (Iyengar, 2012).   When making decisions in an organization, it is highly important for leaders to follow and endorse a company vision and to facilitate the vision, leaders should follow a roadmap in the form of a mission statement.  A mission informs the vision and provides the tactics to achieve the mission.  Essentially, mission statements concretize the vision.  Vision in business requires that you clearly see where you choose to be in the future and formulate the necessary steps to get your organization there (Lavinsky, D., 2013).  Not all people are visionaries, so the mission spells out what it is that needs to be achieved and gives a clearer picture of what the overall goal is. For Example, the vision of Feeding America is: "A hunger-free America".  It could be vague as to what that statement of vision actually means or how it could even be possible, but once you read the mission statement, it concretizes its meaning. It informs the vision by stating, “Our mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger” (Baylor, 2019). Feeding America has developed interactive data visualizations to better see and understand the issue of hunger and food insecurity (Feeding America, 2019).  These tools and visual aids further concretize their mission and informs their decision on what areas to focus on to achieve their mission and hence, their overall vision.

-Categorization.  We can handle more categories than we can handle choices (Iyengar, 2012).  A recent experience I had with making a choice among what seemed like a sea of photos was when I was putting together a digital photo album for my daughter.  The photos folder on my computer had decades worth of photos that resulted from countless memory cards getting saved on to the photos file.  Since these files were saved by the date, it was easy for me to create new folders.  I created a folder for each of my children and subfolders for each year of their life.  I then went through a process of dropping photos into their respective folder.  After this process, choosing what photos I wanted to include in my project became much easier. Categories help us separate things. It is, therefore, important that they are made to say something to the person who makes the choice (Linde, 2016).

-Condition for complexity. This technique helps the chooser make complicated, multistep choices by starting off with small, easy decisions and then increasing the complexity of choices as they go (Iyengar, 2012).  Companies like Prezi use this by giving users easier choices first, and gradually increasing the complexity of the choices as they build and add branches to their presentations. In my experience, the first step was choosing a template, next was the layout, and with each new choice, the decision becomes more complex as I added branches of categories. For customers, building up from the simple choices to more complex ones is necessary to prevent dropoff during the buying process (Ye, 2018).

          Personally, I'm a huge fan of keeping things simplified.  While this topical area of discussion hasn't received much attention in recent years, it should, and not only for business owners targeting customers but in organizations of every kind.  If applied, it would make life much easier for choosers.

References:

Baylor, C. (2019). 18 captivating mission statement examples you need to read. Retrieved Jun 5, 2019, from https://www.bluleadz.com/blog/15-of-the-very-best-mission-statement-examples

Feeding America. (2019). Study shows children more likely to face hunger than overall population across america. Retrieved Jun 5, 2019, from https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/study-shows-children-more-likely-to-face-hunger-than-overall-population-across-america-300841430.html

Iyendar, S. (November 2011). How to Make Choosing Easier. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose.

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. E. (2001;2002;). Wharton on making decisions (1st ed.). New York: Wiley.

Krochow, E. (2018). Too much choice. Retrieved Jun 5, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stretching-theory/201810/too-much-choice

Lavinsky, D. (2013). Are you a visionary business leader? Retrieved Jun 5, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/davelavinsky/2013/04/26/are-you-a-visionary-business-leader/

Linde, E. (2016). Choice overload – 4 ways to make it easier for customers to choose (and be happy with their choice). Retrieved Jun 5, 2019, from https://conversionista.com/en/blogg/choice-overload-2/

Ye, L. (2018). The psychology of choice: How to make easier decisions. Retrieved Jun 5, 2019, from https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/the-psychology-of-choice

Personal Decision-Making Style_Kristina Kemp

Personal Decision-Making Style
By Kristina Kemp

          To discover and assess the personal decision-making style, the author took the Decision-Making Inventory by Johnson & Coscarelli.  Results determined the strongest match to the spontaneous/internal decision maker, followed by a spontaneous/external style, having the ability to be both introspective, as well as talk through the parts of an issue with others while reaching a decision. The results were not surprising given many previous personality type indicator test results validating this prevailing dichotomy of ambiversion.  The author will examine her decision-making style in more detail, explore the process of decision making, how the author handles emotions in decision making, and what ways the author tests the effectiveness of decisions to gain further insight into her personal decision-making style.

Decision-Making Style

          Without putting too much emphasis on individual topics, the spontaneous thinker jumps from one goal or idea to the next, linking one thought to the next, continually changing and updating their thoughts about it as they discover more about each alternative. To fully grasp an idea when making a decision, they put themselves within the situation to create a vivid sense and a feeling about what that alternative encompasses when evaluating it.  They tend to base their decision on the whole picture and how it feels rather than on the individual parts (Coscarelli, 2007).  The spontaneous characteristic is a very accurate feature of the authors thinking and decision making. 

The main feature of the internal decision-making style is the need for introspection before speaking. Organization of their thoughts privately before sharing thoughts with others is important and if they haven’t done so, may become aggravated or confused, however, the author albeit primarily introspective, is contented to organize thoughts out loud, argue all the sides of an idea, and speak while talking through an idea (Coscarelli, 2007).  The most important consideration for the author in this assessment is the external and internal decision maker features together embolden the author to both internalize information and bounce ideas off people without needing to take time to organize thoughts before discussing them.  This internal and external decision-making style is advantageous for the author because it allows for flexibility to work alone or in a group dynamic when assessing implications, different perspectives, ideal outcomes, and the pros and cons of a problem.  The decision-making style informs the general process the author takes when faced with a decision.

The Decision-Making Process

          According to Duncan Brodie, there are six steps in the decision-making process: Define the problem, assess the implications, explore different perspectives, get clear on your ideal outcome, weigh pros and cons, then decide and act (Brodie, 2007).  Although the author does not explicitly list and name each of these steps in an organized manner, the basic premise is generally adhered to in making simple to complex decisions.  When defining the problem, the author will get clarity on what exactly the problem is if it seems ambiguous.  After assessing the implications or all the possible results and the effects, at this point, the author may solicit input from others.

Because the nature of the author's primary decision-making style, the tendency is most often to think through the problem, assess the implications and have a good idea of the what the decision should be before exploring different perspectives and bouncing ideas off others.  When it comes to soliciting input, the author will most often solicit input from others regardless if the decision should be made alone or if it involves anyone else and especially if other people are affected, the author will ultimately get a consensus from others or all parties having a connection or some involvement with the decision.  Because we’re human; we have cognitive limitations, limited ability to forward plan, under-estimate the value of future outcomes, have limits to observing from and learning from the past, and have a tendency to use unbalanced intuition (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001).  For these reasons, the author believes it especially essential to solicit input, buy-in, feedback, or a consensus from the most significant number and variety of individuals where possible.  Once the pros and cons are assessed and talked through, the decision is often clear, and action is taken.  Most of the time, the effectiveness of a decision is unknown until implemented. 

Emotions in Decision-Making

          When engaged in decisions involving emotions, it’s common for decision makers to minimize negative emotions and decision effort and maximize the accuracy of their decisions through the way they structure their choice strategies (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001).  On the other hand, there are other ways that managers tend to handle emotional decisions including constructive avoidance, considering attributes sequentially instead of simultaneously, reframing to reduce emotion, and lastly, and how the author tackles emotional decisions, force decision makers to confront emotion.  The author firmly believes that ignoring or avoiding the emotional component is avoiding the human aspect of decisions in work and everyday life.  Ignoring emotion and not addressing it will result in someone being affected either presently or down the line, it may also create a disengaged, problem-focused environment especially if every decision is handled in this way.  When making decisions involving emotions, the author will typically face emotions head-on and ensure they are addressed as an explicit part of the decision and not disregarded only to re-surface in the future through possible negative effects.  The author agrees with Hoch, Kunreuther, and Gunthers conclusion that by explicitly considering emotions, the effects become more easily manageable (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001).  Next, the author will analyze the thought process behind making a decision that requires a higher level of experience and skill.

Unqualified for Decision-Making

          When faced with a decision that requires more skill or experience and the author does not feel qualified or equipped to respond, the best course of action is to consult with an experienced and qualified individual when available depending on the gravity of the effects of the decision.  If the effects are minimal, using heuristics and intuition may prove to be valuable, but when the impacts of the decision are significant, the decision-making process warrants further investigation. When a qualified individual is unavailable, the researcher may conduct the necessary research to gather as much data as possible to find the best solution and deliver a much an analytic as opposed to a heuristic decision as possible.  With this in mind and getting a consensus of a group of individuals given the same data, would warrant the best possible decision.  Using heuristics when appropriate, and by choosing more in-depth analysis when called for, or by balancing the two with judicious use of models can provide the due diligence when faced with a complex decision or a decision out of the author's scope of ability (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001).  When finalizing a decision, especially a complex one, it is appropriate to test its effectiveness.

Testing Decision Effectiveness

          Testing the effectiveness of a decision is essential to discover where strengths and weaknesses are and what needs to be done to increase the effectiveness of the decision.  One way to test this is to ask those who will be affected by the decision.  If it involves many individuals, tools such as surveys, feedback systems, and measuring decision metrics, as well as forums for making and discussing decisions (Blenko & Mankins, 2012) can all prove to be an effective way to not only test effectiveness but provide insight for course correction. For example, a survey would show the weaknesses in the decision and the areas it should be improved. Surveys are a powerful measurement tool of improvement stimulation that could shed light on decision effectiveness across the organization and show where you or your firm stacks up against the competition, or if you are getting worse or better over time. 

Conclusion

           After discovering a personal decision-making style of spontaneous internal/external, the author assessed the traits of these styles and found them to be accurate.  Specifically, when it comes to the spontaneous nature of her personality. Additionally, results from the Decision-Making Inventory confirmed an internal/external decision-making style.  This finding gives insight into how decisions are made, how they are made when emotions are involved, how the author approaches a decision when she lacks the appropriate skills, and how decision accuracy is tested.  Overall, the author discovered a wealth of information on her decision-making process.  The self-reflection was insightful and helped her to understand the process as well as different scenarios and looks forward to furthering research and insight into ways to improve decision making across multiple different situations.

References

Blenko, M., & Mankins, M. (2012). Measuring decision effectiveness. Retrieved Jun 2, 2019, from https://www.bain.com/insights/measuring-decision-effectiveness/

Brodie, D. (2007). 6 steps to better decision making. Retrieved Jun 1, 2019, from https://ezinearticles.com/?6-Steps-to-Better-Decision-Making&id=817450

Coscarelli, W. (2007). The Decision-Making Style Inventory, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Retrieved on May 31, 2019 from https://www2.humboldt.edu/acac/sites/default/files/ADD9-T10-AZ-Undecided.pdf

Hoch, S., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

A632.1.4.RB_Multistage Decisions_Kristina Kemp

Multistage Decisions

          I’ve always thought of myself as an intuitive decision maker based on learned behaviors from past experiences both through my own and vicariously through others, but I admit, I don’t necessarily look ahead to future possibilities when making decisions.  As much as I make efforts to do so as in cases when I begin a new diet and set strict parameters for myself, ultimately, I find that although I had good intentions, the results most often show that the larger picture of the future state hadn’t been considered, resulting in failure.  When using intuition in making important decisions, I attempt to minimize risk by considering historical results to determine future expectations along with my emotions from personal thoughts.  On the flip side, dynamic decision models use math equations to make more complex decisions where the human mind falls short.

          Authors Hoch, Kunreuther, and Gunther in Wharton on Making Decisions recommend a balance between mathematics models that balance out myopic human tendencies to not think ahead and intuition in decision making.  Being aware of the dangers of being overly confident in our intuition in solving dynamic decisions and becoming clear on the implications of making the wrong decision when stakes are high is a balanced approach recommended to managers. The authors, however, emphasize when to use our intuition because most often, our everyday reasoning can lead to the most optimal decisions.  This conclusion would improve my decision making for several decisions where the stakes are high such as in the workplace in a management role where stakeholders rely on my decision making.  In such a case, it would reduce errors and subsequently save a lot of money. 

          A recent decision I made was choosing a graduate program to pursue.  In making this decision, I didn’t evaluate risk or use data.  I used intuition and took into consideration factors the following factors: I had to feel good about it, had to feel motivated by learning outcomes and objectives of the courses, there had to be a high success rate for graduates of the program, I had to consider the workload and schedule, online or classroom, I had to determine if the risk is worth the reward, as well as considering my feelings and emotions about taking the required time away from my homeschooled son. Overall, I had forecasted the Project Management program to be very beneficial all things considered, and intuitively it felt as if I was pointing myself in the right direction.

          It may be possible to predict the future impact of a decision applying optimal dynamic decision analysis only if the probability of given states at given times is determinable.  By considering a starting point, it can be solved as if it were a series of independent two-stage problems and solved through backward induction and forward thinking to the endgame or best-case scenario.  In my example, applying optimal decision analysis wouldn’t work because the total utility value is not so linear and additive.