The year 2020 has forced many of us to make difficult decisions, on personal as well as professional fronts. Many have had to give up some comforts and re-evaluate goals. If this year has taught us anything, it’s the importance of having back-up plans and making strategies that last longer than a year.
Some people managed to turn the COVID-19 situation around and use it to their advantage by taking a strategic decision. They started new businesses or jobs to fulfill their financial needs or to simply utilize their skills. A strategic decision-making process can help you analyze what you need, what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it.
Strategic decision-making is about evaluating the pros and cons of a situation and developing a step-wise approach to realize your goals. Harappa Education’s Making Decisions course will teach you important concepts to navigate decision-making with essential tips to assess your needs while accounting for challenges.
What Is Strategic Decision-Making?
Strategic decision making is about choosing the best path to success. For instance, if you’re starting a new business, you need to consider factors like cost, time and the target market. How do you classify decisions to reach the ideal solution? Strategic decision making will help you formulate a plan of action and align your small-term goals with the big picture.
From a management perspective, strategic decision-making is different from the routine choices you make every day. As a manager, for instance, you have to delegate roles, communicate goals to your teammates or external stakeholders and account for uncertainties. The decisions you make not only affect you but the organization as a whole. It’s a good practice to cultivate objective decision-making abilities, free from bias and prejudice.
Let’s look at how you can use strategic decision making to achieve your organizational goals.
Decision-Making Strategies In Management
For business owners and managers, strategic decision making takes into account several key factors that take into consideration both long-term goals and short-term goals. Let’s look at each of these goals to understand what is strategic management with examples of strategic decision making.
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Long-Term Goals For Strategic Decision Management
Let’s say that you want to open a zero-waste store in your city. From eco-friendly and repurposed products to a section dedicated to refillable jars, your store is dedicated to the conservation and protection of the environment. In this case, your long-term objective is to operate an eco-conscious business. Your strategic decision-making process will include working with local vendors to avoid mass-produced items, minimizing waste by making strategies and spreading awareness about environmental conservation.
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Short-Term Goals For Strategic Decision Management
As part of your zero-waste business strategy, you have to consider the smaller steps you’ll take before achieving your long-term goal. These are short-term goals that you would want to achieve. These include defining clear parameters like the location of your store, size of the store, number of employees, marketing strategies and how to appeal to environmentally-conscious customers. These goals require immediate attention as they form the foundation to support the big picture.
An ideal decision-making process is one where everything goes according to plan. But that’s not always the case. Your circumstances may derail your plan or affect your ability to make a sound and unbiased judgment. Situations aren’t always optimal and many things could go wrong. You have to try and realign your goals whenever you face a setback. For this, your strategy needs to be flexible and objective.
Conclusion
If you master the art of making a strategic decision, you’ll be able to overcome any barrier in your personal and professional life. Decision-making in your personal life often requires you to reflect on your past experiences and future aspirations. (www.dermaflage.com) But professional decision-making is all about thinking with a level head and considering more than one factor at a time.
Harappa Education’s Making Decisions course will help improve your decision-making skills by teaching you important concepts such as the ‘Five Components of Decision-Making’. These components focus on defining problems, identifying and weighing the criteria, rating your options and making a final decision. Effective decision-making will help you achieve success at work and realize your professional goals.
Explore topics such as Decision Making, the Steps of Decision Making, How to Make Decisions, the Decision Making Methods, the Decision Tree Analysis & How to Make Good Judgements from our Harappa Diaries blog section and develop your skills.