User:Pamela.echegaray/sandbox

= Strategic Decision Making =

Strategic decision making is a management process part of the strategic management, this process involves several steps to have a better process in the decision making process. The Strategic Decision Making process is exclusive for top managers. Strategic makes reference to an strategy. The Decision making process lead to a process in which the organization decides to implement selected strategies set the implementation of a Strategic planning and keeps on appraising the progress and success of implementation through regular assessment. Strategic decisions are characterized to be risky, dangerous or they can cause a strong impact on the success and survival of a company. The Strategic Decisions Making sets an efficient process to build, make and implement a Strategic Plan succesfully.

Aspects that affect the Strategic Decision Making
The strategic decision making can be affected by the Cognitive bias, they can affect the way that people process information and make important decisions. It can cause that the managers may make poor strategic decisions. It exist a List of cognitive biases. The Cognitive bias have been tested by many laboratory settings, so it can be reasonably proved that biases exist and people tend to follow them.

The biases that affect more the making decision process are:

=== Techniques for improving the Strategic Decision Making  ===



There exist some techniques that helps to set a decision making mechanism so the company's strategic decisions are realistic.

Devil's advocacy
It is a technique in which the managers in charge of the Strategic Decision Making identifies all of the considerations that might make a proposal unacceptable. It is necesary to generate a plan and a critical analysis of the plan.

One of the members of the Decision Making team acts like the devil's advocate and emphasize all the reasons that might make the proposal unacceptable. It helps to discover the gaps and possible perils of the recommended courses of action.

Dialectic inquiry
It needs the generation of a plan and a encounter plan that reflect plausible but conflicting courses of action. The managers in charge of the Strategic Decision Making are going to listen to a debate between the advocates of the two plans and are going to make a decision based on what they listen and which is the best plan to have a high performance.

Outside view
The managers in charge of the Strategic Decision Making are going to make a research of past strategic initiatives and determined which of them where succesfull and improved them and also take a look on the strategies that failed.

=== Strategic Decision Making Process     ===



The strategic decision making process its based on the follow steps:

Identify Problems
First we need to recognize that there is a decision to be made. Strategic decisions are complex, they address to an specific problem, need or opportunity.

Seek Information
Managers need to clarify their options once they have identified an issue that requires a decision. Managers may seek relevant information about an issue.

Brainstorm Solutions
When the manager have a more complete understanding of the issue, the managers move on to make a list of potential solutions. This step can take some hours, weeks or moths depending on the difficulty of the issue.

Choose an Alternative
Managers need to weigh the pros and cons of each potential solution, and after that seek for aditional information if needed, Then with all the options on the table they chose the best chance of success proposal. It is always important to look for external advice or a second opinion.

Implement the Plan
Once you have made a decision, there is no time to second guess what is going to be implemented. You have chosen an strategic planning so you need to start using it with conviction. It is important to say that the manager can change the strategic plan if the results are not what expected. Strategic plans usually count with monitoring systems in order to evaluate the outcomes of the decisions.

Evaluate Outcomes
Even the most experienced business owners can learn from their mistakes. It is important to track the results of strategic decisions you make as a small business owner; be ready to adapt your plan as necessary, or to switch to another potential solution if your chosen solution does not work out the way you expected.