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Strategic Decision Making Although this may seem simple and just walk around sense for most, verbum sat sapiente (a word to the wise is sufficient) this strategy method to decision making will prove to be one of the most important concepts for your successful completion of this VFD management course and as you apply what you gain throughout this course to your line officer and/or administrative position with your fire department. The strategic method follows these steps in order:
1, Identifying and Defining the Problem Therefore, in using the navigation links above, complete each step and each exercise in the order that they appear. DO NOT SKIP ANY! You may also get a key piece of information in some of the examples and exercises that you will find most helpful in later modules of this management course. Therefore, you may find that by skipping any step or any exercise in this strategy method decision making segment, that this will prove to be a "bad decision", just as skipping any of these steps in a strategy method decision making process will lead to making a bad decision . . . have we said this and advised this emphatically enough? Think of the four (4) basic steps as steps in a pyramid, where each successive step helps to move upward and to narrow and refine your decision, which moves you closer to the top. Act The first step is identifying and defining the problem. Who has the problem? Is it your decision to make? What are the limits on the decision? What level of control do you have over the decision? You may find as you move up the steps in the pyramid to the information gathering step and its three (3) parts, that you may have to take a step back and reconsider the problem you have identified and perhaps re-define it. That's fine. That happens and is natural. If you're using the strategy method of decision making correctly, this will happen many times and is therefore a positive occurance. The second step is gathering information that has three (3) parts. The first part is looking at all of the alternatives, both positive and negative. The second part is predicting outcomes, both positive and negative. And the final part of your information gathering step is examining the risks and which risks you are willing to take. The third step in strategic decision making is making a plan. We cover planning processes in greater detail in various subsequent modules, but here we will look only at simple plans, as they relate to a specific decision to be made. This is yet another reason why this decision making module, along with a few of the forthcoming modules, are actually fundamentals to the even later modules. The final step in a strategic decision making process is act or action. If you don't act on the decision you have strategically processed, you have then made a default decision to do nothing. We will take each of these step in the strategy method of decision in order and explain each an cite some examples for each. With the "Information Gathering" step in the strategy method of decision making we will take each part in the order they appear: looking at all alternatives (positive & negative), predicting outcomes (positive & negative) and examining risks. To also help you really apply and internalize this information, we will add some meat to the "examining risk" part, by adding a few exercises and examples where you can determine what type of risk taker that you are. Last modified: September 21, 2008
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