A manager’s role is crucial in an organisation, where success of the organisation depends on the manager’s ability to help reach the organisation’s pre-determined goals (Sharma, 2016).
As growing in one’s career adds new responsibilities, decisions become increasingly more challenging. Managers play a major role in the organisation’s decision making system. Managers are faced with difficult decisions such as how to deploy resources to grow the business and where to invest in order to remain competitive.
Every manager will be involved in decisions on talent, that is, promoting or hiring new people within the organisation, and all will encounter ethical dilemmas (Petty, 2017). Mintzberg argues that decision-making is one of the most important aspects of any manager’s role, as decision-making is the essence in accomplishing the targets of the organisation. Based on different types of decisions, he identifies four decisional roles which are imperative for managers. These are the entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator roles.
As entrepreneurs, managers are in a position to make decisions regarding changes that are needed in the way the organisation is functioning. Managers have a vital role in initiating change and they are to assume an active role in deciding how to implement change. This requires being creative and knowledgeable in generating innovative ideas. On the other hand, their role as disturbance handlers, requires them to make decisions from situations that are unpredictable and from situations that are way beyond their control. Therefore, managers should be skilled to assist and recover from problems that might appear within the organisation.
The resource allocation role of managers is central to the way organisations can be analysed. This requires managers to make decisions regarding the allocation of all the organisations’ resources, namely, people, money, equipment and time. In doing so managers are programming work, authorising actions and scheduling time. The negotiating role is a mandatory skill as managers need to be the main negotiator in any decisions which will affect the short and long term success of the organisation.
.The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (2018) identified a step-by-step process that should act as a platform to assist managers in making more calculated and thoughtful decisions. The first step in making the right decisions is the ability of the manager to identify that there is a problem and deciding that the problem needs to be addressed. The next step is to gather all the available information so that the decision is built on actual data. This requires determining what information is suitable for the decision and how it can be obtained. Once the issue is clearly understood, it is time to identify alternatives at your disposal. Here the best course of action can be identified. Next, managers should select the option which has the highest chance of success by weighing the pros and cons of each alternative plan of action.
Seeking out a trusted second opinion to obtain a better perspective of the issue may be helpful. Here, making sure that managers understand the risks involved with the chosen route is important (Hussung, 2017). Next, a plan of implementation needs to be created, by identifying all resources that are needed. Gaining support from stakeholders and employees is crucial at this stage as getting others involved with your decisions assists in the effective execution of the plan. Finally, evaluating your decision for effectiveness is required as it gives a clear insight of what went well/wrong and identify improvements for further decisions.
The negative impacts of lack or poor decision-making of managers on organisations where discussed by Corredor (2018). He stated that in order to accomplish anything in their organisations, managers may rely on two options. These are, making decisions and controlling the outcome or not making decisions and reacting to whatever happens. Corredor (2018) added that many managers are nor very good when it comes to making decisions. They either hurry through the step process, several times missing a step and or else they get stuck in weighing the evidence and never move to decision making step. The outcome of missing steps is making wrong decisions, where the wrong decisions, for example, lead to expensive costs and set back the entire department back for months.
The worst option a manager can choose is not to make any decision at all. There is always a better decision than not making a decision. This is an indication of poor leadership qualities and will lead to a negative perception problem from the stakeholders’ view.
The enrolment of trusted professional advisors shall allow mangers go through the difficult decision making process. Llopis (2013) stated that employees expect leadership from their managers, but instead they may find themselves led by persons who lack focus and vision, mishandle resources or get caught-up in corporate politics. Being in a managerial position is not for everyone and this becomes evident when managers make bad decisions, especially when there is a repetitive pattern. Employees are inspired when their leaders make thoughtful, good decisions. On the other hand, when leaders make bad decisions, employees start to lose confidence in them and there is a decrease in trust, which can eventually lead to a decline in performance quality from the employees. Decisions are at the center of managers’ duties and leadership activities. While some decisions may be fairly easy to make due to policies that dictate the correct option, other unstructured issues test managers’ abilities as decision-makers which in turn impact their success as managers.
.Petty (2017) identified measures that enable managers to develop into better decision-makers:Decisions promote actions. Managers need to respect the employees’ need tor decisions and work hard to help employees excel forward with their initiatives- Avoid mixing emotions when complex decisions need to be taken. Emotions can lead to a fast decision or slow the decision-making process to a crawl.
If feeling pressured, one should resist the rush to take a decision, take a step back and use the decision-making process to help reframe and assess possible options
