The need for creative solutions is essential in today's fast moving business environment. To produce novel and yet functional ideas and solutions, the deciision-maker requires foresigh to see opportunities that others cannot and the insight to approach each problem from different angles while maintaining a holistic view.

MAKING effective and quality decisions is crucial to organisations and business. Effective decision-making is something that every manager strives to achieve, as the quality of the decisions goes a long way towards determining the overall organisational effectiveness. It is arguably the key managerial skill that cuts across the four management functions of planning, organising, leading, and controlling. There are at least four predominant decision-making models, namely, the rational model, incremental model, satisfying model, and garbage can model. Most managers believe that managerial decision-making is rational. This implies that all available choices within specified constraints have been taken into consideration in managerial decisions. This is expressed as a simplified six-step process depicted in   Table 1.
      Most managers use the rational decision-making model as it is objective, logical, and systematic. Despite this, there are numerous examples of poor decisions made at both operational levels and corporate levels. These are often due to eight common pitfalls in making right decisions.

1. Complexity of problem
      Studies show that most people can only comprehend or handle seven pieces of information at any point of time. This limited cognitive capability and information-processing capacity results in managers being unable to fully comprehend the issue or problem. There is a tendency for managers to reduce the complexity of a problem to more manageable levels. This often oversimplifies a problem.
      Two heads are better than one. The use of teams will help to reduce such issues. Group decision-making will help better diagnose and define the problem.

2. Unclear problem
      In defining the problem, the identification of the root of the problem is important. Sometimes the manager does not probe deep enough to root out the real cause of the problem. This may result in defining the problem too broadly or too narrowly. There is a tendency to confuse the symptoms with the problems. When a problem is not well defined, the solutions will address the symptom and not the actual problem.
      Managers should use the five to seven "whys" technique and group brainstorming to clearly define the real cause of the problem.

3. Mental blocks
      Mental blocks in the alternativesearch process could exist at the cultural, perceptual, emotional, or intellectual levels. Perceptual blocks, also called biases, can distort problem identification, which in turn results in focusing on certain types of alternatives and not others.
      Similarly, cultural blocks prevent thinking out of the box and instead promote remaining in one's own comfort zone. Creating a multi-cultural team by bringing together members from different cultural backgrounds may help to reduce such a barrier. However, bringing together a diverse team may still be subject to a conservative bias depending on the organisation's culture.
      Many organisations tend to reward "obedient" staff rather than staff who
"make waves". A risk-adverse culture is the biggest hurdle in the alternatives
generation process. Creating an innovative culture takes time. It requires commitment from top management to reverse a culture from risk-adverse to risk-taking.
      Emotional and intellectual blocks may kill a good idea. Many of the idea
killers highlighted in Table 1 are due to emotional and intellectual blocks. To
reduce or eradicate such barriers, one needs to keep an open mind in generating
"fresh" ideas.

4. Available information
      In the search and research process for alternatives, many decisions are
based on accessible information rather than quality or "fresh" alternatives. A
manager needs to clearly distinguish between urgent problems and important problems. Urgent problems need to be solved in very short time frame. Thus, quick fit solutions are essential.
      Important problems usually require information that is not easily obtained and are usually far more complex and far reaching. Managers must be resourceful in their information search.

5. Evaluation criteria uncertain
      Agreeing on the evaluation criteria is never an easy task. If the criteria are not clearly defined, this will pose a difficulty in evaluating and choosing the right alternatives. Every decisionmaker has different views on what they consider relevant criteria for a decision. This makes the decision-making process subjective as all selected criteria are not equally important. Different importance will have to be attached to each criterion.
      In order to enhance the objectivity of this process, it is best to rank the selected criteria first before attaching a weight to each criterion. Each decision-maker may indicate his/her personal preference and the process will be based on one-person-one-vote, a democratic style.

6. Choosing the best decision
      In the evaluation and selection process, the organisational structure especially the power structure has to take into consideration. An organisation is made up of people with diverse backgrounds and divergent interests. It is not easy to develop a truly unified interest or common single goal. In the evaluation and selection process, sometimes rather than achieving organisational goals, there is bias towards individual self-interest or preference. Thus, there is a tendency to compromise between the "best" alternative and the "politically correct" alternative.
      In some situations, specific alternatives have already been prematurely
selected prior to the search and evaluation process. This is part of office politics. In such contradicting situations, the evaluation process tends to be an outcome of power influence rather than rationality.
      Power play and office politics are unavoidable in some organisations. However, to reduce them, teamwork and team spirit are essential.

7. Resources constraint
      An organisation's time, cost, and human resources constraints would limit the choice of the best alternative. Instead of choosing the best alternative and expanding the required resources to execute the selected alternative, there is a tendency to choose the alternative that "fits" existing resources. Often "new" alternatives that look remarkably like the existing ones tend to be selected.
      Decisions are rarely simple or a single event. In an organisation, all decisions are inter-related. Thus, a manager needs to have a good conceptual and holistic view in being able to see both the "trees" and the "forest". The goal is to know how to use limited resources to achieve unlimited outcomes.

8. Management involvement
      Making the right decisions is only half the process, the other 50 per cent must come from implementation. Motivation and commitment are essential "ingredients" in the successful implementation of the selected alternative. A mediocre alternative with good execution can bring about better a result than a good alternative with poor execution.
      Thus, in the entire decision-making process, getting all relevant people involved in the process will not only increase the level of acceptance of the alternative but would also strongly enhance successful implementation.
      There are also differences in management approach. Western managers tends to make faster decisions with a smaller groups of people but take more time to communicate and convince the decision in implementation. On the other hand, Asian managers may take more time and effort to get as many relevant people involved as possible in the decision-making process but when comes to implementation, it is much faster and smoother.

Dr Sheh Seow Wah is a management consultant for HSG Group.