Vocabulary
____? Making choices among alternative courses of action, including inaction.
____? Decisions that occur frequently enough that we develop an automated response to them. Examples would be what to wear, what to eat, etc.
____? Automated response to problems that occur routinely.
____? Unique, nonroutine, and important. These decisions require conscious thinking, information gathering, and careful consideration of alternatives. Crises constitute nonprogrammed decisions.
____? Decisions that are made to set the course of an organization. Example would be an owner of a restaurant making a decision to have great customer service.
____? Decisions about how things will get done. Example would be the manager deciding to implement a free dessert policy as a way to handle customer complaints.
____? Decisions employees make each day to make the organization function.
Example would be a server at a restaurant making individual decisions each day be evaluating whether each customer complaint received is legitimate and
warrants a free dessert.
What is...
1. decision making
2. programmed decisions
3. decision rule
4. nonprogrammed decisions
5. strategic decisions
6. tactical decisions
7. operational decisions
???????
■ Team Composition
● Diversify your team
● Change group membership
● Leaderless teams
■ Team process
● Engage in brainstorming
● Use the normal group techniques in person or electronically to
avoid common group process pitfalls
● Use analogies.
■ Leadership
● Challenge teams
● Let people decide how to achieve goals
● Support and celebrate creativity even when it leads to a mistake.
Include processes to learn from mistakes.
● Role model creative behavior.
■ Culture
● Institute organizational memory
● Build a physical space conducive to creativity
● Incorporate creative behavior
○
What is Enhancing Organizational Creativity?
■ There’s an emergency and a decision needs to be made fast: individual
■ “Individual decision making may also be appropriate if the individual in
question has all the information needed to make the decision and if
implementation problems are not expected.”
What is ..."When to decide between individual vs. group think"?
allows executives to see things from new viewpoints, assimilate complex
concepts, and address real-world problems and opportunities”
What is Cynefin framework?
○ How To Use The PMI EDMF
■ Represented as a sequence of questions and sub-questions to stimulate
the user beginning with the recognition and assessment of the issue, and
ending with a decision and action.
■ Answers to the questions raised by the framework are the responsibility of
the user.
Represented as a linear step though users of the framework will find it
useful to cycle steps.
What is PMI Ethical Decision-Making Framework?
A series of steps that decision makers should consider if their goal is to maximize
their outcome and make the best choice.
■ Step 1
● Identify the problem
● Example would be getting a new car.
■ Step 2
● Establish decision criteria..
● Examples would be the number of seats, doors, etc.
■ Step 3
● Weigh decision criteria.
■ Step 4
● Generate all alternatives.
■ Step 5
● Evaluate each alternative against the criteria you have
established.
■ Step 6
● Choose the best alternative.
■ Step 7
● Implement the decision.
■ Step 8
● Evaluate the decision.
● What was wrong about the previous decision, did it hold up?
What is Rational decision-making model?
Use This Model When:
Rational ● Information on alternatives can be
gathered and qualified.
● The decision is important.
● Trying to maximize your outcome.
Bounded
Rationality
● The minimum criteria are clear.
● You do not have or you are not willing
to invest much time to make the
cision.
● You are not trying to maximize your
outcome.
Intuitive ● Goals are unclear.
● There is time pressure and analysis
paralysis would be costly
● You have experience with the
problem.
Creative ● Solutions to the problem are not clear.
● New solutions need to be generated.
● You have time to immerse yourself in
the issues.
What is Decision Making Model?
■ Groups should do the following:
● Discuss the symptoms of groupthink and how to avoid them.
● Assign a rotating devil’s advocate to every meeting.
● Invite experts or qualified colleagues who are not part of the core
decision-making group to attend meetings and get reactions from
outsiders on a regular basis and share these with the group.
● Encourage a culture of difference where different ideas are
valued.
● Debate the ethical implications of the decisions and potential
solutions being considered.
■ Individuals should do the following:
● Monitor personal behavior for signs of groupthink and modify
behavior if needed.
● Check for self-censorship.
● Carefully avoid mindguard behaviors.
● Avoid putting pressure on other group members to conform.
● Remind members of the ground rules for avoiding groupthink if
they get off track.
■ Group leaders should do the following:
● Break the group into two subgroups from time to time.
● Have more than one group work on the same problem if time and
resources allow it. This makes sense for highly critical decisions.
● Remain impartial and refrain from stating preferences at the
outset of decisions.
● Set a tone of encouraging critical evaluations throughout
deliberations.
● Create an anonymous feedback channel through which all group
members can contribute if desired.
What is Recommendations for Avoiding Groupthink?
Characterized by stability and clear cause-and-effect relationships that are easily discernible by everyone. Often, the right answer is self-evident and undisputed.
What is Simple Contexts?
___?
■ Assessment
Make sure you have all the facts about the ethical dilemma.
■ Alternatives
Consider your choices.
■ Analysis
Identify your candidate decision and test its validity.
■ Application
Apply ethical principles to your candidate decision.
■ Action
Make a decision.
What is Framework?
___?
○ Tendency for individuals to overestimate their ability to predict future events
___?
○ Tendency to view previous mistakes as obvious through selective reconstruction
of the event
___?
○ Tendency to be influenced by the way a situation or problem is presented
What is...
1. overconfidence bias?
2. hindsight bias?
3. framing bias?
___?
■ Tendency to rely too heavily on a certain piece of information
● Focusing on salary during a job search and not considering included
benefits
■ Great Bear Wilderness Disaster
● Declaring all five members of a flaming plane crash dead, when they are
actually not all dead
● Anchored on the fact that the plane was on fire when investigators
arrived
What is Anchoring?
■ Nominal Group Technique:
● Ensures equal participation and prevents groupthink “used to
structure group meetings when members are grappling with
problem solving or idea generation” (544).
● Steps:
○ “Each member of the group begins by independently and
silently writing down ideas” (544).
○ “The group goes in order around the room to gather all the
ideas that were generated” (544). Continues till all ideas
are shared.
○ “A discussion takes place around each idea, and members
ask for and give clarification and make evaluative
statements” (544).
○ “Group members vote for their favorite ideas by using
ranking or rating techniques” (544).
What is tools for making better decisions?
A conditioned response that occurs when people are blinded to a new way of
thinking by the perspectives they acquired through past experience, training, and success.
What is Entrained Thinking?
____?: Make sure you have all the facts about the ethical dilemma and ask
these questions:
■ Does it abide by the law?
■ Does it align with the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct?
■ Does it agree with your employer’s and client’s code of ethics and
conduct?
■ Does it align with your ethical values and those of the surrounding
culture?
What is Assessment?
___? A process of generating ideas that follows a set of guidelines, including not criticizing ideas during the process, the idea that no suggestion is too crazy, and building on other ideas (piggybacking).
___? A variation of brainstorming in which the group focuses on ideas that are
impossible and then imagines what would need to happen to make them
possible.
What is Brainstorming and Wildstorming?
___?
■ Individuals continue on failing course after encountering revelations
● Sunk cost fallacy
■ Motorola’s Iridium project
● Solving phone coverage around the world
● Planned in 1980s, released in 1998
● The phone coverage in the 1990s was massively different and already
improved from that of the 1980s, making the customer base significantly
reduced
● Product was not very good, filed for bankruptcy in 1999
■ Occurs because decision makers do not want to be wrong
● Pride or fear of consequences
■ Incorrect beliefs that spending more time and energy can fix the wrongdoings or
negate the consequences
What is Escalation of Commitment??
___?
● Written response to a series of questions instead of meeting
together to make decision
● Steps:
○ “The first questionnaire asks individuals to respond to a
broad
question such as stating the problem, outlining
objectives, or proposing solutions. Each subsequent
questionnaire is built from the information gathered in
the previous one. The process ends when the group
reaches a consensus” (544).
___?
● Each person has one vote and majority of votes win
___?
● “Groups may use when the goal is to gain support for an idea or
plan of action” (545).
● “The process works by discussing the issues at hand, generating a
proposal, calling for consensus, and discussing any concerns. If
concerns still exist, the proposal is modified to accommodate
them. These steps are repeated until consensus is reached. Thus,
this decision-making rule is inclusive, participatory, cooperative,
and democratic” (545).
what is Delphi Technique, majority rule, Consensus?
Group hits a stalemate, unable to agree on any others because of each
individual’s entrained thinking-or ego.
What is Analysis Paralysis?
___?: Consider your choices by asking the following questions:
■ Have you listed possible alternative choices?
■ Have you considered pros and cons for each possible choice?
○ ____?: Identify your candidate decision and test its validity with these
questions:
■ Will your candidate decision have a positive impact or prevent harm to
project managers, PMI staff or volunteers, clients, your employer’s
organization, other stakeholders, the environment, or future generations?
■ Does your candidate decision take cultural differences into account?
■ Looking back, will this decision seem like a good idea a year from now?
■ Are you free from external influence to make this decision?
■ Are you in a calm and unstressed state of mind?
What is Alternatives, and Analysis?
○ A tendency to avoid a critical evaluation of ideas the group favors.
8 symptoms of groupthink—all direct quotes from (542):
1. Illusion of invulnerability is shared by most or all of the group members,
which creates excessive optimism and encourages them to take extreme
risks
2. Collective rationalizations occur, in which members downplay negative
information or warnings that might cause them to reconsider their
assumptions.
3. An unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality occurs, which
may incline members to ignore ethical or moral consequences of their
actions.
4. Stereotyped views of outgroups are seen when groups discount rivals’
abilities to make effective responses.
5. Direct pressure is exerted on any members who express strong
arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes, illusions, or
commitments.
6. Self-censorship occurs when members of the group minimize their own
doubts and counterarguments.
7. Illusions of unanimity occur, based on self-censorship and direct pressure
on the group. The lack of dissent is viewed as unanimity.
8. The emergence of self-appointed mindguards happens when one or
more members protect the group from information that runs counter to
the group’s assumptions and course of action.
What is Groupthink?
Process losses
● “For example, groups may suffer from coordination problems.
Anyone who has worked with a team of individuals on a project
can attest to the difficulty of coordinating members’ work or even
coordinating everyone’s presence in a team meeting.” (540)
● Suffer from groupthink
● “Group decision making takes more time compared to individual
decision making, because all members need to discuss their
thoughts regarding different alternatives.” (540)
What is disadvantages of group decisions?
___?
● Predict what can go wrong. “Research has shown that the simple
exercise of imagining what could go wrong with a given decision
can increase people’s ability to correctly identify reasons for
future successes or failures by 30%” (546).
● Steps (all quotes from page 546):
○ A planning team comes up with an outline of a plan, such
as the launching of a new product.
○ Either the existing group or a unique group is then told to
imagine looking into a crystal ball and seeing that the new
product failed miserably. They then write down all the
reasons they can imagine that might have led to this
failure. Each team member shares items from their list
until all the potential problems have been identified.
○ The list is reviewed for additional ideas.
○ The issues are sorted into categories in the search for
themes.
○ The plan should then be revised to correct the flaws and
avoid
○ these potential proble
What is Premortem?
Phenomena that arise when small stimuli and probes (Whether from leaders or
others) resonate with people.
What is Atrractors?
___?: Apply ethical principles to your candidate decision by asking these
questions:
■ Would your choice result in the greatest good?
■ Would your choice treat others as you would like to be treated?
■ Would your choice be fair and beneficial to all concerned?
○ ___?: Make a decision after considering these questions:
■ Are you willing to accept responsibility for your decision?
■ Could you make your decision public and feel good about it?
■ Are you ready to act?
What is Application, and Action?