Week two, and I am still out of my
comfort zone and loving it. This week we discussed how DSS systems can complement
expertise during decision making to encourage more favorable outcomes. As
our chapter demonstrated this week, “by carefully combining human experts,
statistical models, and new data-mining tools, we can improve the quality of…decisions”
(Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, p. 101) and work towards
identifying ways to achieve more favorable outcomes.
Additionally, I can also
see how a DSS can help leaders avoid areas of “…the choice overload problem”
that plague leaders and everyday people (Iyengar, 2011) . Watching Iyengar’s
video, however, gives me hope that I can learn to become a more calm and
calculated decision maker with practice.
Out of the four ways to improve my
decision making, I enjoyed learning the metrics surrounding categorization and
conditioning for complexity, versus cutting and concretizing. Although I can
see where doing more with less, is helpful, overall this is not a strategy that
would work in my current capacity within a healthcare environment. We have too
many variables to simultaneously balance for mutual gratification.
Additionally, concretizing, a very
valid point, works when you are dealing with things, not necessarily people/
patients, I am struggling how our decisions could be improved considering
everything we do is patient centered decision making to begin with. I will admit
that I had a small laugh when Sheena discussed ATM purchases. My husband uses
his ATM card like crazy and has no idea how much is spent on eating out. When
we go out to eat, it is habit, not need, which drives his decision process. He
orders from appetizers to desserts but doesn’t scale down his spending habits
at restaurants and evaluate how much food and money goes to waste. I would
prefer to pay cash for our dining experiences, to prevent wasting so much food
and money; the fact that we don’t see our funds going down doesn’t slow our
spending and increase our savings. Concretizing would encourage us to make
better decisions on how much we spend eating out if the cash was slowly
disappearing out of our wallets.
Moreover, in the business office I am
confronted by a multitude of decision where I have to balance patient
satisfaction, net revenue impacts, legal and compliance constraints, as well as
various operational impacts. In order for me to improve my decision making
process, it will help me to practice categorization of these areas and quickly
resolve what is in the best interest of many, versus the best interest of only
one. As Iyengar mentions, categories allows us to compartmentalize the variety
of options in which we have to choose from (Iyengar, 2011) . However, the
categories must make sense to the person choosing, not the “…choice maker…” (Iyengar,
2011) .
Therefore, I must represent the options impacting each department in a way that
makes the most sense to gather input and then collectively arrive at the best conclusion
for our organization. .
I also believe that the most
impactful way I can improve my decision making is learning to do so by managing
and conditioning myself, and others, for complexity. Because of the various
departments in which are impacted by our business office, coaching others to become
engaged members of the decision making process will improve organizational efficiencies,
as well as empower my overall team.
In order to move towards this type
of culture, it would be best to start off with having them become involved with
smaller daily operation decisions in which will prime them towards offering
different perspectives towards larger, more impactful, decisions down the line.
As a leader, it will not only complement my participative leadership style, but
also welcome the development of critical thinking skills with my team.
As our video discusses,
conditioning for complexity allows the decision maker to practice making
smaller decisions, and then gradually increase the complexity of our decisions over
time, not all at once (Iyengar, 2011) . Iyengar’s low choice
to high choice model has proven that “less is more” and allows us to remain
engaged by learning how to choose in a focused manner based upon practice,
comfort, and the familiarity of making decisions (Iyengar, 2011) .
Our decision quality and satisfaction
improves by remaining engaged and learning to make more complex decisions over
time with practice. Overall, Sheena Iyengar is one of my favorite TED speakers;
her simple yet effective approaches to common decision-making barriers are broken
down easily and demonstrate that we can learn to be “be choosy about choosing” (Iyengar,
2011) .
Until we blog again!
References
Hoch,
S. J., Kunreuther, H. C., & Gunther, R. E. (2001). Wharton On Making
Decisions. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Iyengar, S.
(2011, November). How to make choosing easier. Retrieved from TED.com:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose
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