Life is all about making decisions. Some are big and can alter the course of your life. Like deciding what business school to join. Some are small like deciding what to wear to work.
Essentially, decision-making is all about choosing from the available options. The better choices you make, the better decision-maker you’ll become.
You have many decision-making examples in daily life such as:
- Deciding what to wear
- Deciding what to eat for lunch
- Choosing which book to read
- Deciding what task to do next
And so on. Now let us look at some of these examples in detail.
Decision-Making Examples In Daily Life
These are common decision-making examples in daily life. Apart from these, you should know about other decision-making examples.
Whether we talk about decision-making examples in our personal lives or at work, we can spot many more decision-making skills examples, some so routine you don’t even notice them. However, some decisions can have a far-reaching impact.
Examples Of Decision-Making In Management
At work, the core function of the management is to make decisions on business operations and growth. Whether it is managing the workforce, servicing clients, ramping up production, or hiring new employees, we see plenty of decision-making skills examples in everyday operations.
Let’s understand the importance of decision-making better by looking at some examples of decision-making in management:
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Decision-Making In Human Resources
Imagine you are the CEO of an e-commerce start-up. Your work is expanding and you need to hire the right resources to help you realize the vision of creating a leading online retail platform.
You would need to hire people who are experienced and adept in their fields such as software development, marketing, operations, procurement, and logistics.
Since the business is an online start-up, you won’t need to hire employees who work on the premises exclusively. You can also get talented location-independent workers capable of delivering the required technical support and services online.
By ensuring an optimal mix of on-site and remote workers, you can easily carry out the functions in a cost-effective way. Emails and chat communications as well as video interactions can keep the team spirit going. This will also give you the flexibility of hiring talent that might be scattered over different geographic locations and can come together digitally to create path-breaking solutions.
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Decision-Making In Production
One of the most typical examples of decision-making in management is to take a call on production facilities.
As your business expands and demand grows, you will be forced to increase your production capacity. The next step would be to decide how much capacity installation is required to meet demand effectively. You will also need to identify the right equipment for the purpose and the workforce to run the production processes.
Your decision has to be guided by the fact that the ultimate aim is to increase production sustainably so that you have the flexibility of scaling up or down without incurring a high cost.
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Decision-Making In Marketing
At some point or the other in their journeys, most companies undergo rebranding. Usually, businesses are small initially, with only local or regional reach and branding, but as they start expanding, the need for rebranding surfaces.
Quite often, logos, the company’s official mascots, and even names are changed to assert a new identity, capability, and vision. Rebranding activities are strong decision-making skills examples that take into account company values, products, target audiences, cultural and social sensibilities, and business aspirations.
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Decision-Making In Client Servicing
When a business is new, the aim is to bag as many projects and clients as possible. The more work you get, the more money you make is the usual belief. However, you can look at various decision-making skills examples to understand that this approach is not ideal in the long run.
For instance, you might discover that you are spending too much time and resources on an old client and not generating enough revenue that could justify such heavy resource allocation. That client might be one of your earliest clients and could have been instrumental in your business’s early-stage growth. However, it is important to move with the times. The client or project that worked at the beginning might not be feasible once you grow beyond a certain stage. Hence, tough decisions need to be taken now and then.
Such situations are common decision-making examples.
Conclusion
We just went through some of the usual decision-making and problem-solving examples that are a part of most people’s professional lives. There could be more complex decisions that we would require to take in the course of our careers. Sometimes these can be individual decisions such as hiring or firing an employee or organizational decisions such as opening a new office.
Harappa Education’s Making Decisions course is a great online resource to learn about decision-making examples and to understand and learn the art of decision-making. The course has a section on The D-R-I Model (Decision-Reason-Implication) that familiarizes learners with the process of decision-making and helps them understand the logic behind a decision and its likely implications. This course is ideal for developing leadership skills and becoming superior performers.
Explore topics such as Decision Making and Steps in Decision Making from our Harappa Diaries blog section to analyze problems and make decisions.