Chapter 7: decision making

"When it comes to your decisions,  

you own the outcome." 

 Joanne Frye William, Minnesota Library Association Conference 2012

(quote provided by Tina Norris)

Making choices! We do it all the time, in both our personal and professional lives. At work, the most typical day-to-day activities require us to make choices. As managers, our decision making styles and abilities not only model behavior for our employees, but also showcase how much accountability we're willing to give them in terms of making their own choices.

Some types of decision-making that are important to understand:

• Programmed vs. non-programmed decisions: 
• Programmed decisions are every-day matters--they are routine and do not involve a lot of risk. These can be choices like who you will assign to work this weekend; or when you will set a deadline for a particular task to be completed.
• Non-programmed decisions, on the other hand, are more dangerous: the outcomes for success are not usually well-defined and have wide implications for the organization.
• Individual vs. group decision-making: Most decisions are individual, but decisions made with a group can be much more complicated. While individual decisions are often more of an 'event,' group decisions should be thought of more as a 'process.'

To showcase the relationship of decision making to management, here is a 'cautionary tale' from group member Kathleen about decision-making in her work environment:

"In my department at the library, the way things are set up, the department head has to approve a lot more decisions than is often practical.  Her input and approval is necessary in some cases, but the rest of the staff is sometimes left waiting for her to approve things, when it would be more streamlined if she had delegated the decisions or trusted our judgement. This seems to be an understandable) hang up.  We need decisions to be approved by the bosses, but we also need work to get done.  When work has to be approved even farther up the chain, it slows things down even more, as the group agonizes over a consensus that must be reached among everyone, when one person could have done the work in much less time."