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Gathering Information After you have the problem identified and defined, along with considering who all has the problem, the next step in the strategy method of decision making is gathering the information. Their are really three (3) parts to this process. You can gather information by either considering these parts yourself, gather them as a member of a committee, or seek outside assistance from either persons in the community or professionals. The first part of the information gathering process is looking for all of the alternatives, both positive and negative. The second part of the information gather process is predicting outcomes, both positive and negative. And the final part is examining the risks and determining how much risk you are willing to and the ratio of risk to potential reward. We will cover each of these three parts of the information gathering step in greater detail with examples and exercise. Example for Initial Consideration: Your department needs more volunteers. That is a clear problem. To further define it, you determine that you need at least 5 new members within the next 90 days, because the next fundamentals training class at the fire academy starts then. A) Where might you gather information that you need to effective reach out into the community to recruit these new volunteers? B) What alternatives, positive and negative, do you have? C) Who may be information resources for you to further consider the alternatives that exist? D) What are the potential outcomes, both good and bad to these alternatives? E) Who in your company and community might be a good information resource to help predict the potential outcomes from your identified alternatives, both good and bad? F) What are the risks for success and for failure with these alternatives and potential outcomes? H) Who in your company and community may help you identify and define the risks for success and for failure of your identified alternatives? I) What limits, level of control, and other methods of decision making might apply to your problem/decision to recruit new members? As we go through the various phases of the information gathering step, remember this example and see how what you have considered and developed on your own. In the above and other examples, you may find that with each part of the information gathering step that you may have to go back to the previous one, or potentially all of the way back to identifying and defining the problem and who all may have the problem. This is not a mistake, nor are you stupid for not correctly identifying and defining the problem the first time. Don't feel embarrassed, ashamed and don't take any criticism or crap from anybody for it. In contrast, until you did some home work, asked others, looked at the alternatives, predicted the outcomes and examined the risks, there may not have been anyway humanly possible to correctly identify and define the problem. You're the one who has decided to solve a problem with a strategy decision, while others complained about the conditions, blame-projected the cause onto others and conditions, and/or say it is hopeless, so why try to do anything. Additionally, as often occurs, you may find out that the problem you initially identified that has arisen, was a subsequent problem to a more core problem that needs addressed and a decision made. An example of this may be that you need new members and that is a problem that is easily and immediately identified by all. The deeper and more core problem may be that you have members and officers who are discouraging new recruits, because more members and certainly those with more talents, education, training, skills and experiences threaten their "turf"; thus the last thing they want or need is anybody coming in there, who might become a risk to their fragile and threatened egos and knock them off of their "King of the Hill" positions. Now let's move forward to the "Looking for Alternatives" part of the information gathering step to examine other examples and exercises showing how there are almost always multiple alternatives to any problem. Last modified: September 21, 2008
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