M5A 2: Discussion—Hiring for Success

This course opened with the argument that as managers in an organization your most vital skills are analysis and decision making. Perhaps knowing what you now know, you can add to these vital skills the ability to recognize and repair the pitfalls, biases, and individual shortcomings that plague organizations and groups.

The role of the modern, and appropriately risk adjusted, manager is to fully reflect on the motivations and incentives that delay and undermine sound decision making and effective, objective management. Beyond this, you must understand how to deploy the tools you have learned to accurately assess risk/reward scenarios and to frame decisions in ways that quickly create sound and actionable alternatives.

Lastly, and most importantly, you must revisit how your own toolkits have been augmented and how some of your most important choices may be evaluated differently.

In order to achieve these goals you need to increase your knowledge a step further. Consider that in addition to all you have learned, speed, strategy, and a number of other factors play critical roles in your decision-making repertoire. Being a great decision maker must include the ability to make choices quickly, efficiently, and strategically. If not, you may run the risk of losing your competitive advantage.

In this module, you will learn that maintaining your competitive advantage requires not only precision but also speed. Choosing quickly demands that you keep a vigil over real-time operating information and rely on quick, comparative analysis to accelerate your decision making.

Great managers and decision makers resolve conflicts quickly and constructively. They rely on trusted, reliable counselors, not sycophants. Great, fast decision makers also use multiple alternatives and have backup plans—multiple options (frames) improve precision and offer a fallback position if the need arises. Finally, great decision makers incorporate the decision at hand with broader strategic considerations.

Ultimately, there is still one more role for the rational manager in organizations. That is, great decision makers facilitate great decision making.

As this course draws to an end, you will investigate ways in which you can bring structure and precision into your organization, striving towards your successes breeding success in others.