Decision Making Methods
Decision making is a key leadership skill. A person in power must need to know the importance of making the right decision and all of the methods available to arrive at the correct decision. Fortunately there are a number of methods and processes that can be used to derive the correct decision.
The decision making process I chose to outline is called the Delphi Method. “The Delphi method was developed in the early 1950s at the RAND Corporation to systematically solicit the view of experts related to national defense and later in controversial sociopolitical areas.” (1) The Delphi method starts by selecting a panel due to their expertise. The members are kept separated and answer questionnaires or surveys in order to solicit specific information about a subject. Keeping them separated avoids the negative effects of face-to-face discussions and problems with group dynamics. Members are asked to share their assessment and explanation of a problem or predict the future state of affairs. The mediator controls the interactions, processes the information, filters out irrelevant content, summarizes the answers and then sends them back to the group members. Members then make another decision based on the new information. This process is repeated until a common decision is made. The process is centered around the participant’s expertise and communication skills. The major benefits of the Delphi process are the elimination of problems between participants, the efficient use of each participants time, the diversity of ideals, and the accuracy of solutions and
predictions. (1) I think this process is very interesting because it does eliminate any personal feelings towards other participants or social discomfort. It weeds out any obstacles to true and nonbiased decision making. This process concentrates all responses to just the problem at hand. “In one case, reported by Basu and Schroeder (1977), the Delphi method predicted the sales of a new product during the first two years with inaccuracy of 3-4% compared with actual sales.” (2)
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