Decision Making and Problem Solving Skills for Managers

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Decision Making and Problem Solving

So you’re a manager, the big man with a suit and greater responsibilities. People seem to respect you, and life seems to be going well with a pay raise and extra perks. But it isn’t all rainbows and blue skies each day. We know how this feels.

Decision Making and Problem Solving go hand in hand. Decision making has its roots in economics and research into business operations, while Problem Solving was first defined by psychologists in a study of how we think.

In life, we’re dealt with several problems, and regardless of how it can feel unfair, before you can tackle one, along comes another, ready to take you by surprise. Often the pace and origin of these problems are so fast that we resort to taking shortcuts. In a working environment, taking shortcuts seems ideal if you want to quickly make a decision or solve problems. However, resorting to such a technique can come around to bite you later. Sounds familiar?

Harvard Business Review found a 95% correlation between decision effectiveness and financial results for every country, industry, and company size.

However, in a McKinsey survey of more than 1200 managers, 61% said that at least half the time spent making decisions is ineffective.

If you can relate to this idea of difficulty in making decisions or solving problems, then you should continue reading. In this post, we’ll talk about how you can relieve yourself of all the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of managing your team and yourself through a crisis, how you can create fundamental skills required to solve a problem with ease, and help nurture future leaders through effective delegation.

In an organizational hierarchy, important decisions are most often only tasked to the important people. As a manager, these crucial company decisions will become your responsibility. If you want to become the best at your job, being a manager, you’ll need to work on showing leadership, an inclination to detail, adaptability, and communication skills to power through difficult situations where you’re tasked with making decisions.

How to make excellent decisions?

Effective leaders know not only what problems they want to solve, but also are prepared to think about all decision tools and styles they will use to solve an organisational or team problem. A good manager doesn’t see obstacles, only challenges. And challenges are worth conquering, isn’t that right?

Define a decision Style for yourself

“If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.” – Abraham Maslow

Taking just a single approach to everything in life and, most importantly, at work isn’t going to get you anywhere. This is why it’s of vital importance to define a decision making style for yourself.

Decisive decision making: Make plans that touch down on all bases of what you want to achieve and then stick to it. Upon its execution, move on to the next decision. This style focuses on speed, is action-oriented, and will make your decision making as a manager consistent.
Flexible decision making: A flexible approach is also all about speed. However, in this style, when you’re face-to-face with a problem, as a manager you should focus on adaptability. What this means is that you’ll be perceived to change the course of action if need be, based on your research and data.
Integrative decision making: In this style of making a decision, the importance is on how many different elements and courses of action you can take into account. Good decision making in business involves developing a tendency to broadly frame situations and explore a wide range of implications.
Hierarchical decision making: When you follow this style of making decisions as a manager, the focus is not on speed but rather on analysis and the involvement of others’ views and perspectives from the hierarchy. The contributions of different individuals can be debated and challenged. Such a business decision can easily be confused with collaborative effort. However, it’s more like a competition, and the best one wins.

We understand that a lot of you may not want to be cataloged under these styles. Do you know what’s the neat part? You can create your own style, but make sure to keep these fundamentals in mind.

Steps to the Process of Decision Making

Once you have the right style in mind, you need to follow a few steps to decision making. We know how this sounds, like a lot of extras in this area, but be assured that this is of the utmost help.

- Identify the problem: Before you even begin thinking about forming an image in your head about making good business decisions, you need to pay attention to the actual problem or opportunity at hand, which requires you to choose from the metaphorical choices of A, B, or C. Identification of the problem is crucial in understanding how your decision makes a difference
- Collect details: Before you go around weighing possibilities and options for your best business decisions, take time to gather information, facts, and data about the problem. Managers seek out a range of information to clarify their options once they have identified an issue that requires a decision.
- Come up with alternatives: The best decision is often picked from a list of multiple solutions that cater to different approaches. It’s like having to think about all the roads you can take to reach a certain destination. All the roads will get you there, some may be shorter, and others may be pleasant and smooth to ride on, while one road will have an unseen blockade. It’s of great importance to pick alternatives.

Weigh and choose among alternatives: Decision making in management means weighing all the pros and cons of a certain selection. As a manager, you may sometimes need to consult other people on the matter to get a different view or even just wing it and trust your own gut to make a selection. Before you do so, make sure that you understand any risks involved.

Execute your action and review it: Find the resources and support you need from either the human resources point of view, through employees, or equipment, through the available inventory at your organization. Once you have the resources, set your plan in motion. Once in motion, evaluate what went well and what could have been improved in your decision making process the next time.

The Fundamentals of Problem Solving

In a workplace, several problems are likely to come up regardless of whether you expect them or not. Anything from day-to-day nuisances such as not meeting certain goals, hardware failure, performance inconsistencies, as well as more acute problems such as workplace harassment or theft.

It is up to a leader to come up with an efficient solution to such problems and implement them in a composed, contained manner. This is more important if you’re not just in any leadership position but at a manager’s level. For you, this is what will garner respect from your team and establish your authority.

As a manager, problem solving skills are super handy and will help with achieving your goals, managing teams effectively, building collaboration and cohesion, meeting deadlines, and achieving client satisfaction.

The 3 Step Track

To make this process easier for you, problem solving is broken down into three easy steps.

Identify and understand the problem: The very first step of effective problem solving is to identify it as urgently as possible. Problems will multiply tenfold if they go unnoticed, so make sure that you are always on the lookout to identify problems before they escalate. Once you’ve identified a problem, find the root of it and figure out what caused it. Having these facts with you will make your problem solving in leadership much more effective.

Draw up solutions: Many people at the leadership level have a tendency to come up with just a single idea to tackle a problem and stick with it. The core belief behind this is that spending time on finding alternative solutions would be a waste of time. However, a good manager will always step back and brainstorm to develop a range of solutions. This variety will not only help you avoid making impulsive decisions but also give you an approach to figuring out the fairest solution.

Evaluate and Act: The final step is to weigh all the solutions and pick the most effective one. You can also involve your team or subordinates for more perspective. Once you’ve evaluated and picked the best one out, implement the solution in full swing. Monitor the solution and its impact. If you think the solution isn’t working out well then switch to the other solutions that you had devised.

Even if you’re not naturally good at problem solving in your leadership position, it’s always possible to develop relevant skills and follow steps to effective problem solving. With this awareness and knowledge, you too can become the best manager.

Here is another tip for you if you want to enhance your problem solving skills:

The way we act and think in different situations matters a lot in terms of finding the best solution out there. So, there is a small approach towards problem solving, i.e., you can divide your thinking abilities into two categories. The first is divergent thinking, and the second is convergent thinking. Divergent thoughts are about finding new ways of approaching a situation, and convergent thoughts mainly focus on evaluating the best solutions out there.

One of three styles best describes a manager’s decision-making procedures:

Consistent, reflective, or reflexive management. Time, skill, and experience are all necessary for reflexive management. This style of management is characterized by distinct habits, standard responses, and a set of ingrained rules that allow the manager to act skillfully. In contrast, reflective management causes a significant delay in decision making because the manager deliberately selects solutions as the issue arises. Given that these management philosophies represent the two extremes of a continuum, consistent decision making is a style that combines the two, attempting to balance out the drawbacks of each while retaining their advantages.

Decision-making that is consistent is superior in five different ways.

By removing variables through dependability, it enables measurement of your successes and failures.

Setting goals for yourself, making a schedule you can stick to, and even establishing reasonable expectations and work-flow procedures are all made accountable through consistency. As a manager, consistency allows you to build a reputation based on your track record of success. Being consistent will keep you current and relevant because you will always give problems that arise enough thought. Last but not least, decision making consistently will help you to set a good example for your subordinates to follow.

Love solving problems and making difficult decisions? You can master your skills and become the best strategist for making effective decisions with our First Time Manager Bootcamp.