What are the guidelines for effective decision making?

One of the measures of effective management is the extent to which managers adopt effective decision making processes to make decisions. A decision making process and a decision is effective if it makes significant contribution to the achievement of managerial and organisational objectives at acceptable levels of costs and unsought consequences. Within this broad setting, we may identify the principles, guidelines or the ways and means of making the process effective, as follows:

  1. Establishment of multiple decentralised centres of managerial decision making at appropriate organisational levels and delegation of adequate authority along with pinpointing of accountability for making decisions to managers at each centre.
  2. Determination of appropriate decision-making work-load at each centre, so as to minimise the possibility of overloading at any centre.
  3. Co-ordination of various decision making centres through communication and other means so as to ensure consistency and co-operation in making decisions
  4. Establishment of expert advisory staff units to provide the needed intellectual and professional inputs for decision making.
  5. Formulation and communication of organisational objectives, policies, decision rules and procedures to serve as guidelines to managers in their decision making function.
  6. Design and installation of decision support systems which include information and control systems so as to provide logistic support to managers.

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