Using data for effective group decision making

Posted by SharonEvans on February 5th, 2014

There are many that struggle with making decisions. You will come across people that take time to deliberate before they make a decision and you will come across people that are extremely fast at making decisions but without much thought. In both types of decision making there are risks associated. But when someone is given the right kind of data and an analytics tool decision making becomes faster and the decision taken is also accurate. Decision management for enterprises can be facilitated with certain tools that not only facilitate individual decision making but also group decision making.

Someone who is sitting right at the top of an enterprise hierarchy has the most critical decisions to make. Take a CEO for example. it is this person that takes the most important business decisions. Basis the decision taken by the CEO an enterprise formulates its business strategies, both in the short term as well as in the long term. Now imagine what would happen if a CEO takes decision basis their gut feeling or their perceptions. This form of decision management by a CEO is bound to put an enterprise in a perilous situation.

The best decision makers are those that keep perceptions aside. Their decision management is based on history, trends, market knowledge and a lot of data. Someone that runs a successful enterprise always deliberates before taking a decision and this is where a tool can help. When a CEO has to take a decision quickly but efficiently they can use such tools to quickly do the analysis and take their decision.

Group decision making is all the more difficult. Give a group of people to come to a common consensus on a topic and see the fun. Everyone will have their points of view and you may even see fights breaking out among the team members. This happens very often in sales meets and top level business meets where the group members are naturally aggressive. There are various behavioral programs that are conducted for group decision making but one needs more than the right behaviors. Decision management tools offer data analysis and trends, both past and future, so that the group members can arrive at a common decision without relying on their perceptions.

And of course, when someone is able to keep track of decisions previously taken it is easier to set benchmarks for the decision making process at hand. With decision making tools it is possible to retain previous decisions so that the leader of the group can help the members commit to decisions and their executions. For the purpose of group decision making such tools prove to be extremely helpful and they make the entire process very smooth and the outcome very efficient.

Whether one needs to take a decision on their own or want to engage team members in group decision making it always helps to have the right resources at hand. The online decision management tools help manage all such resources in one place for the best decision making.

Group decision making is not the easiest of things to do. Effective decision management involves keeping aside perceptions and focusing on hard data.