DECISION MAKING

1. DECISION MAKING MODULE THREE, LESSON ONE

2. Aim of lesson • To explore with locally elected Liberian leaders the best ways to make decisions

3. Lesson Objectives • to give locally elected leaders the best strategies for decision making and • to clearly lay down the ways in which locally elected leaders can succeed by making good decisions

4. Major questions to be answered • What is decision-making? • What are the major approaches to decision-making? • How are decisions made? • What are the consequences of decisions

5. Centrality of Decision Making to Leadership • In any community, leaders are expected to make decision about so many things • A particular decision may be social, economic, political or cultural • Whatever the case, good leadership is about making decisions on behalf of those that are represented and governed

6. Available Options and Choices in Decision Making • Making decisions • Delegating Decisions • Delaying Decisions • Supporting Decisions • Veto of Decisions • Cancel of Decisions • Decision not to… • Decision and Choice • Political Decisions: decisions that are designed to leave things in the end exactly as they were in the beginning.

7. Decision-Making and Good Governance • The decision making competency is very much linked to the principles of good governance • Participation or civic engagement: Popular participation or civic engagement is at the heart of participatory decision making • The rule of law: everybody in Liberia are governed by the law

8. Decision-Making and Good Governance Cont’d • Transparency and accountability: openness as well as good and acceptable justification for leadership actions • Responsiveness and timeliness • Equity and inclusiveness • Efficiency and effectiveness: doing the right things and doing things right

9. Gender and Decision-Making • There is sufficient evidence that women are as good as men in decision making. Therefore, women should be involved in decision-making

10. Criteria for Effective Decision Making • focuses on what’s important • is logical and consistent • acknowledges both subjective and objective factors and blends analytical with intuitive thinking • requires only as much information and analysis as is necessary to resolve a particular dilemma it encourages • encourages and guides the gathering of relevant information and informed opinion • is straightforward, reliable, easy to use, and flexible

11. The Art and Stages of Effective Decision-Making • Awareness and vision: knowledge and information about the situation that we which to change and about what we want to achieve are important • Building decision-making coalitions: find others that will be helpful in the process • Focusing in on the problem or opportunity: Leaders must be careful to distinguish between problems, their root causes, their symptoms and their solutions • Determining your goal and objectives: In solving problems, it is important for you to decide on what you aim to achieve and the things that you will do to achieve them

12. The Art and Stages of Effective Decision-Making Cont’d • Developing options: outline the different possible solutions and decide the best course of action • Deciding on a course of action: The inadequacy and competing demands on scarce resources make it impossible for any on decision to satisfy everyone • Implementation readiness: After the leader passes through these stages and arrive at a good decision, the next thing will be to find out whether those who will carry out the decisions have the resources and ability to implement the decisions.

13. Step One: Awareness and Vision • Insights – seeing things that are not obvious to others. • Perspective – looking at things from a different point of view. • Intuition – hunches from our collective experiences that dwell somewhere in our sub-consciousness. • Increasing our peripheral vision – taking off those blinders to widen our scope.

14. Contrasting Awareness and Vision • Awareness is seen “what is.” Vision is seeing “what can be.” • Awareness is more tactical, short-term and specific. Vision is long-term and strategic in its perspective. • Awareness looks at the details; vision paints the “big picture.” • Awareness involves convergent thinking or focusing in. Vision is at its best when our thoughts diverge from the beaten path

15. Contrasting Awareness and Vision Cont’d • Awareness often requires hindsight, determining what went wrong and how to fix it. Vision operates from foresight, envisioning what is over the horizon and seeing a future that is not yet invented. • Awareness is often intense, involving constant scanning of the environment for clues. Vision comes to us best when we transcend our immediate environment. • Awareness is enhanced by our analytic abilities to put t0 and two together and get four. Vision benefits from conceptual thinking, taking two and two and putting them together so they equal multiple digits.

16. Reactive and Proactive Thinking • Protective decisions are based on future conditions that may not be totally understood • Reactive decisions are based on current and past information and insights • Both approaches are important to effectiveness in decision making

17. Problems and Opportunities • Problems are often oriented toward maintenance – fix it, solve it, and get on with it. Opportunities are focused on something we often call development, be it social, economic, physical, or political. • Opportunities are, nevertheless, problematic. They almost always involve some risk and uncertainty • Opportunities live in the future and the risks must be calculated against a future not always predictable. Problems emerge from the past, resulting from actions and inactions that have or have not happened or decisions that predecessors made or did not make

18. Problems and Opportunities Cont’d • Opportunities require foresight – a vision about what can be. Problems, more often than not, require hindsight – determining what went wrong. • When tapping opportunities, the critical question is what if? The most important question when solving problems is why? • When dealing with problems, leaders seek solutions. In dealing with opportunities, the search is for benefits. • Opportunities can be ignored. Problems, in most cases, shouldn’t be ignored.

19. Step Two: Building Decision-Making Coalitions • It is very important for leaders to share the power of decision-making with other citizens • There are decisions that are important to share with your management and technical staff, and others where you will want to involve participants from the grassroots level of your community.

20. Step Three: Focusing in on the problems and Opportunities • Problems are those things that keep your elected body and your local government from getting from where you are to where you want to be • Setting goals or defining end results, what the problem would look like if it were solved, becomes an important task early in the decision-making, problem-solving process • Without knowing where we want to go, it is difficult to determine 1) how we will get there and 2) whether or not we have arrived.

21. The Problem Dialogue • One way to make better decisions when the decisions involve problems is to ask you problem a series of simple questions • What is the problem, the real problem? Don’t be fooled by symptoms and solutions that go around dressed like problems • Why is it a problem? Or, what is causing the problem? The why? Question is one worth repeating over and over until you get to the bottom of the problem • Why should the problem be solved? If this question can’t be answered, you may not have a problem worth pursuing

22. The Problem DialogueCont’d • When and where is it a problem? These questions help you pinpoint the source or sources of the problem. • Whose problem is it? This is just one of several who questions that may need to be asked. • What really is the problem and why? It is important to continue to come back to this fundamental question even when you think you have the answers earlier. • What would happen if the problem was not solved? Sometimes, the best solution to a problem is no solution

23. Deciding what to do with your “Found” Problem • Before you venture into problem-solving, you need to decide whether or not an attempt should be made to solve the problem and how soon • How urgent is it to find a solution to the problem? A problem is urgent if it requires immediate attention to avert a crisis • How important is it to find a solution to the problem? A problem is important if neglecting it could result in a serious problem for the future of the community.

24. Deciding what to do with your ProblemCont’d • How feasible is it to solve the problem? Some problems can’t be solved with existing levels of technology • Is it withinyour local government’s control to solve the problem? • Is your local government willing to make the commitment to solve the problem? • While should we take advantage of a potential opportunity for our local government.

25. Problem Solving Approaches • Reactive: the local government has a problem and reacts to solve it • Proactive: stands by every elected official to search out and seize upon opportunities both within the local government and the community

26. Determining Goals and Objectives • A goal is the global objective, less specific, less measurable • An objective is a statement of the outcome you want to accomplish.

27. Criteria for defining objectives • An objective is specific. It states what is to be accomplished in the shortest possible terms. • States an end result, not an activity. • Is something the individual group, organization wants to do. • Is measurable. • Has a target completion date. • Is attainable within the time available. • Is largely within our control

28. Questions guiding the formulation of objectives • a) How will I know if I have been successful in achieving my objectives? • b) Will it make any difference in the governance and management of our local government? • c) As objectives are written, questions must be asked as to whether they are: • 1) measurable • 2) specific • 3) result-oriented • 4) realistic and attainable • 5) time bound

29. Developing Options • Determine driving forces, those that push us towards our objective • Determine restraining forces, those that stand in the way as obstacles • Determine how to unbalance the forces and shift the equilibrium in the desire direction • Diagnose: Identify the major forces, driving and restraining, that are helping to maintain the current level of activity • Unfreeze: Change the different strengths of the individual forces, both pro and con • Redefine: Re-freeze the situation at a new, desired level of achievement-based on intended results

30. Basic decision-making strategies • Add to the driving forces. This generally is less desirable since adding driving forces usually results in more opposing forces, which increases tension • Remove or reduce restraining forces. This is usually more desirable and less obvious • Add driving forces and eliminate or reduce driving forces. This is probably the most frequently use strategy. • These above strategies make up what is called force field analysis

31. Guidelines for Using Force Field Analysis • Which of the forces should you dismiss as being impossible to change? • Which of the forces are most vulnerable to change? • Which of those are also more important?

32. Addition questions in force field analysis • Who has access to or influence over the force you want to change? • Which force, if you change, it will trigger other forces? For example, influencing a key leader may automatically influence his or her followers. • What are the resources you have available or can mobilize to bring about the desired change?

33. Addition questions in force field analysis cont’d • Where do we have the most leverage to influence the forces? • What pockets of new resistance can be expected to develop as you begin to strengthen or diminish other forces? How can they be countered? • Who needs to be involved or informed to either lessen the resistance to change or to provide support for the change?

34. Deciding on a Course of Action • The analysis stage of decision-making, problem-solving, opportunity-seizing • process should provide emerging options. • Options, by their very nature, requires more decision-making • Because leaders operate in the public arena, there are many potential consequences to the decision they make • Their decisions can be positive, negative, or a rich mix of the two

35. Consequences and opportunity cost • It’s important to think about both sets of consequences when moving toward a final decision • Consequences also can be short-term and long-term • In an environment of scares resources, it is important to consider what economists call the “Opportunity Cost” of decisions • Opportunity Cost simply means that implicit in every decision to expend scare resources on a particular activity or facility is a decision not to use those same resources to address some other problems

36. Challenges in deciding options • It is impossible to know all the options that are potentially available in any complex situation; • It is impossible to foretell future consequences accurately although we must try to foresee the consequences of our decisions to the extend we can; and • It is impossible to place a value on events that have not yet occurred

37. Implementation Readiness • Interestingly, the decision-making process does not end with making decisions. • It is important to insure that decision become effective actions. • Two dimensions are relevant in accessing the potential effectiveness of your decision: a) the quality of the decision, and (b) its acceptance by those who either have to execute it or will be affected by it

38. Factors determining quality of decisions • Goal focus: Will the decision we made or the options we decided upon achieve the goal or solve the problem to our satisfaction? • Resource availability: Do we have the resource to carry out the decision? • Timing: Is the decision right? In government or politics, timing can be everything

39. Factors determining quality of decisions cont’t • Feasibility: Is the decision feasible to implement? • Adequacy: Is the decision adequate to achieve your goal or solve the problem? • Acceptance: Will the decision be acceptable to those who (a) are responsible for its implementation and (b) those who must live with its consequences?

40. Some Ways of Making Decisions • Decision by formal authority or self-authorization: power of decision-making that is vested in the office of elected representatives • Decision by minority: decision making that obligates one to a decision to which only a few have a commitment • Decision by majority rule: This involves voting and – or polling of those who have the authority to vote

41. Some Ways of Making Decisions cont’d • Decision by lack of respond: This occurs when nobody provides response to a suggested idea. • By not responding, the group has made the decision not to support the idea or the contributor • Decision by consensus: Consensus is a process where communication is sufficiently open and supportive to make everyone feel they have an opportunity to influence the decision. • Decision by unanimous consent: In this case, everyone agrees on the course of action to be taken

42. Decisions and Dissent • a decision is a judgment and a choice between alternatives • It is rarely a choice between right and wrong • It is at best a choice between “almost right” and “almost wrong.” • That is why dissent is an important part of decision-making

43. The importance of descent • First, it safeguards the decision-makers against becoming prisoners of the institution through argued, documented, thought-through disagreements • Second, disagreement alone can provide alternatives to a decision • Finally, disagreement is needed to stimulate the imagination