Teamwork: Decision Making

Question 1

Why are decision making skills important

Answer 1

Decision making helps us get from being in a situation of not knowing to knowing
- when there are consequences to our decisions that adds pressure to make the ‘right’ decision
- decision making comes into play when we need to generate evaluate, or organise ideas, formulate important criteria for measuring outcomes of success plan and analyse processes, and reduce complexity in large multi factorial problems

Question 2

What is decision-making, optimisation, quality and work improvement, and problem-solving good for

Answer 2

• generating and organising ideas
• determining important criteria
• evaluating ideas
• analysing processes
• determining root causes
• risk assessments
• planning
• data-handling
• statistics and experimental design

Question 3

What are some examples of tools

Answer 3

• fishbone diagram
• Pareto chart
• SWOT analysis
• Decision matrix
• Decision tree

Question 4

When do we use a fishbone diagram

Answer 4

When we are trying to identify possible causes for a problem
- when a teams thinking tends to fall into ruts

Question 5

When to use a Pareto chart

Answer 5

• When analysing data about the frequency of problems or causes in a process
• when there are many problems or causes and you want to focus on the most significant
• When analysing broad cause by looking at their specific components
• when communicating with others about your data

Question 6

What does SWOT stand for

Answer 6

Strength
Weakness
Opportunities
Threats

Question 7

What is string in SWOT analysis

Answer 7

• specialist marketing expertise
• location of business
• quality processes and procedures

Question 8

What is weakness in SWOT analysis

Answer 8

• location of business
• lack of marketing expertise
• poor quality of goods and services
• damaged reputation

Question 9

What is opportunities in SWOT analysis

Answer 9

• a developing market
• moving into new market segments
• new international market
• a market vacated by an ineffective competitor

Question 10

What is threats in SWOT analysis

Answer 10

• a new competitor in your home market
• price wars with competitors
• a competitor has a new innovative product or service
• competitors have superior channels and connections
• taxation is introduced to your good or service

Question 11

When to use decision matrix

Answer 11

• when a list of options must be narrowed to one choice
• when the decision must be made on the basis of several criteria
• after a list of options has been reduced to a manageable number by list reduction

Question 12

What is the decision tree for

Answer 12

• useful for evaluating the outcomes of different decision possibilities
• action and possible consequence
• action refers to the decision chosen
• ‘possible’ refers to probability
• consequence could be in terms of money (profit or loss)