Decision Making and Effective Thinking

Good managers make good decisions. Excellent managers make better decisions.
When managers employ more effective thinking and create better decisions they open opportunities for themselves and their organisations. The wastage from poor decisions is lower, resources are used more effectively, the organisation is more energised and more goals are achieved.
Decision-making and effective thinking are essential skills for the excellent manager.

A Practical and Interactive Two Day Seminar

Decision Making and Effective Thinking is a practical two-day seminar that develops stronger approaches to decision making and thinking.

Participants will:

  • Develop a personal framework for excellent decision-making

  • Develop a personal checklist to help avoid critical thinking and decision-making biases.

  • Become aware of potential weakness in their personal approach to critical thinking

  • Use decisions to energise your organisation

  • Become more decisive and develop the courage to take more decisions

Who Is This Seminar For?

Decision Making and Effective Thinking are for all staff and managers who are required to take decisions that affect their personal success and the success of their organisations.

Seminar Structure

Decision Making and Effective Thinking is a two-day content based coaching seminar. Delegates will have the opportunity to learn from each other in addition to learning from the course material and the facilitator. The seminar is highly interactive. The session will make use of role-plays and case studies to strengthen and build on the core principles. Through the seminar delegates will learn their own decision making style and find opportunities for stronger approaches to critical thinking and decision making.

The seminar is interactive and is most effective in small groups of less than ten participants.

Seminar Content

Making Decisions

  • The nature of decisions

  • The decision making process: creating, evaluating and executing

  • The essential elements for an effective decision

  • The hierarchy of decisions - decisions of purpose, decisions of path, decisions of timing and decisions of process

  • Minimising the cost and impact of the decision making process

Leadership and Decisions

  • Understanding purpose and goals

  • Decisions as an essential part of leadership

  • Identifying the best person to be taking the decision.

  • How decisions empower the organisation

  • Selecting the best approach: individual decision making through to consensus decisions.

Creativity, Innovation and Decisions

  • Understanding innovation and creativity: Including innovation into the decision making process.

  • Developing stronger and more useful ideas

  • Relationship between time and decision making

Effective Thinking

  • The critical thought process

  • The common causes of weak decisions

  • The role of critical thinking in the creation of strong decisions

  • Common causes of weak thinking

  • Developing more effective thinking skills

The Personal Challenges

  • The nature of risk

  • Courage: Decision making with uncertainty and risk

  • Identifying and managing with your personal bias and weaknesses in critical thinking and decision-making.

  • Identifying your personal biases and developing a personal checklist to help avoid these biases in the future.

The Difficult Decisions

  • When you can't win: Choosing between poor outcomes

  • How to recover from a bad decision.

  • Right and right: Decisions between equally good outcomes

  • The role of values and principles in guiding decisions

Connecting with the rest of the organisation

  • How organisations make decisions - navigating the political process

  • The best decisions fail when not implemented: Communicating a decision

  • Gaining support for decisions