Given the central place occupied by decision skills in all corporate environments, this workshop is designed to encourage participants to embrace it with greater rigour and process. After being exposed to a generic and straightforward decision-making methodology, participants will have the opportunity to apply this actively to their own decisions. They will focus on a process which helps them to identify alternatives, criteria, benefits and risks and which ensures consistency and clarity without sacrificing creativity and the 'gut-feel' element. This process is consultative, and deadline sensitive and supports collaboration and distribution of decision responsibilities, including those that relate to decision implementation. Discussion will also focus also ways in which the general methodology can be customised for local conditions.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will be able to:

• Explain the structure of a decision.
• Be familiar with a general decision process.
• Define objectives, options and criteria.
• Capture and document a decision context.
• Obtain judgments from the decision team.
• Convert judgments into priorities.
• Document a decision and add to corporate memory.
• Consult with information contributors effectively.
• Measure intangibles such as morale and goodwill
• Convert priorities into decisions
• Gain consensus from decision groups
• Implement accountability requirements.
• Document a decision and add to corporate memory
• Apply these techniques to a decision of their own.
  

Application Areas Include:

• Strategic Planning
• Risk Management
• Recruitment
• Procurement
• Funding
• Project Selection
• Supplier Selection
• Contractor Selection...and many others

Course Outline

• Introduction
• The Universal Decision Structure
• Decision Formulation
• The Decision Objective
• Developing decision criteria
• Brainstorming the Context
• The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
• Meeting Decision Deadlines
• A Workplace Decision Exercise
• General Prioritisation Methods
• Evaluating Intangibles
• Dealing with Risk
• Converting Decisions into Projects
• Collaborative Decision-Making
• Distributing decision components
• Documentation and Communication
• Towards a Decision Office
• Intuitive vs Analytical Thinking
• Strategic Planning and DM
• Summary and Conclusions
• Evaluating a decision