Decision Making as a Public Manager

The following is a transcript of an audio recording by an expert in the field of public administration who has experience working in federal government and private sector administration.

Introduction

Decision making and program management is the implementing of decisions made during a planning or analysis phase during program management at the administrative level. Being able to make decisions and execute the decisions are critical for public administrators. Decision making involves selecting a course of action from various alternatives often drawn up in planning phases of program management.

The Decision-Making Process

The chapter discusses at least four steps in decision making: identifying the problem or an opportunity, gathering facts, making the decision, and implementing and evaluating that decision. Obviously, no problem operates in a vacuum. Problems and events are not isolated. By the time an issue or a problem arises, it is important to focus on the underlying issues of that problem so that the programs that we implement don’t repeat themselves down the road.

The chapter discusses what the upper limits of a decision are and what the lower limits of a decision are. The upper limits of a decision refer to the limitations and determine how far administrators or public administrators can go.  Lower limits of the decision refer to what at minimum or what must occur minimally in order for a problem to be solved.  Think of that as the high watermark and the low watermark of what you can do to what you would like to do.

Often times in the decision-making process, especially in today’s economic situation, we must look at the cost benefit of what occurs when it comes to making a decision. Cost benefit analysis is a good way in which the measurement of a cost in the distribution of the impacts help guide decision-making processes.  The chapter also discusses the issues of opportunity cost and what value certain resources may be placed whether or not we had the opportunity to use them in a best or alternative fashion.

Systems Analysis

The four steps in systems analysis are problem formulation, modeling, analysis and optimization, and of course implementation. Problem formulation involves identifying the issue or the problem, addressing it at its root concern, and being able to identify why the problem exists in the first place.  We’re able to model out what occurs when we do make a decision towards a solution. We analyze and we optimize through that modeling process ways in which we would tweak a possible solution to a problem to ensure its effectiveness and then of course we implement that particular approach.

Group Decision Making

In decision-making processes sometimes it’s beneficial to get a diverse group of people together to look at a problem or look at a situation and come up with a viable solution. Group decision is called for when there’s really no immediate deadline and the problem is relatively uncertain or complex and has potential for conflict; this can require interagency or intergroup cooperation and its solution has important personnel or organizational consequences. Group decision is also called for when widespread acceptance to an issue and commitment is vital to the success of this particular problem.

When you are getting groups together it is also important to, in the back of your mind, avoid the concept of group think where groups tend to make decisions collectively when in actuality members of the group may have issues or reservations about a path or decision being made by the group. That’s why it’s important to have diverse group dynamics where people participating in the groups have their voices heard. It’s also important to understand, as the chapter points out; best decisions are made when people understand their own biases towards certain preferred outcomes.

Seven Issues which may affect the Decision Making Process

Be aware of the following seven issues that might perhaps affect a good decision-making process: one, being able to only see a certain side of things or a certain dimension; two, giving too much weight to readily available or recent information; three and try not to be overconfident; four don’t ignore the laws of randomness; five being reluctant to audit or improve decision-making always be constantly open to being able to improve the process; six, seeing only one dimension of uncertainty; and seven escalating commitment to the course of action in which people have made a substantial prior investment.

Just because we’ve gone down one path and invested time and resources and energy, doesn’t mean that a certain way or a certain solution is working out the way it was intended. It may be necessary to go back and admit responsibility and change the course of action. In economics sometimes public administrators are reluctant to change the course of action because of the sunk costs associated with already implementing a program. Be aware that it’s okay to admit a mistake or admit a fault and admit that a decision isn’t working out the way that it was intended and to be able to take corrective steps to ameliorate the situation. Decision making is not an easy thing for public administrators and decisions shouldn’t be arrived lightly especially decisions involving large groups of people or decisions involving large groups of stakeholders. It’s important that public administrators take decision making seriously and be able to make decisions with the best possible outcomes in mind.

 

 

 

 

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