WHAT? There is a process?
Leaders stand alone with authority behind them.
“Why, I just think about it a minute, use common sense, make up my mind …and anybody else’s standing around. Isn’t that what leadership is all about?”
Good luck with that!
Hmm, so now what really happens? (and you can ask that five times) [Tibbs, p.286]
Our text begins with a title of Decision-making but we are plunged immediately into a myriad of group problem-solving techniques. Are they effective? Undoubtedly and amazingly so.
Brainstorming
Just as an example, picture us as we ride into the sunset after a long day at the office participating with groups expanding and contracting through brainstorming about issues derived via fishbones and random input. My favorite so far is provocation, which would under other circumstances be called a “challenge” but in this case it is a lateral thinking technique.
And how do these concepts enable our decision processes? Well, not so subtly, we are drawn to the importance and significance of creative thinking as a direct connect to the lifeblood of businesses both small and large and the numbers cited for this conclusion by one study released by IBM are quite stunning with “79% of CEOs expect the business environment to become more complex in coming years” and then following that is the hidden nugget of “More than half of CEOs doubt their ability to manage this escalating complexity” and then more to the point: “A majority of CEOs cite creativity [italics mine] as the most important leadership skill required to cope with the growing complexity” [Tibbs, p 286]. If that doesn’t inspire you from a business point of view, i don’t know what will … these are surely exciting times!
Business Leadership, Management Vision, Teams & Collaboration
And next we come to an unassailable value proposition, that of the divergent/convergent thinking and to further express that, i am including a YouTube video by Mandy Holloway, Co-Founder at Courageous Leaders telling us that “Being a leader with a growth mindset requires a culture that encourages divergent thinking. This divergence allows innovation and collaboration. Then filtering that to convergent thinking, coming to agreement and translating that to decision making means a business continues to grow through innovation as a result of having the courage to encourage divergent thinking.” From an original perspective, we hear in a delightful British accent, what we have been reading in our chapter on Decision-making processes.
It couldn’t be clearer, whether from our text or outside consultants and sources, the future of business is integrated with the creativity of its people. It’s not all about the money!
- Tibbs, S. L. A Systems Approach to Small Group Interaction. McGraw-Hill. New York City. 2012. Print.
I feel like the decision making process is a pretty organic system. When we’ve worked in groups in the past we’ve just thrown out ideas in order to get stuff done. I feel like the intentionality of the processes given to us in the book help us be more creative and expand our horizons for creative capacity in our group plans.
I believe the decision-making process is effective to follow for almost any task specially group work. The decision-making process can help an office task stay organized towards achieving the goal. A leader helps keep the team on task by delegating roles and goals.
The fact that the book throws us into a chapter called “Decision-Making Processes”, which turns out to be an extensive list of explanations of different techniques you can use to deal with those processes is pretty interesting. I had never thought of how complex the decision-making process could be, and brainstorming has been totally revamped for me. It’s a lot to take in, but it is very juicy and worthwhile information.