Seldom do the decisions we make only affect the person who is making the decision. As this is the case, it is extremely important to query other stakeholders to gather their inputs to help guide your decision making process. Ultimately, as the person who holds the duty of making the decision, and the responsibility of having made that decision, this action also brings with it another series of decisions as to how important those other influences are to your decision making process.
In nearly every decision of importance I make, I seek the input of others. Some decisions, you can use historically obtained information. In the situation where I must decide which mayonnaise to buy at the grocery, I remember that my wife prefers Dukes, and my mother prefers Blue Plate. So if this is being bought for my house, Dukes wins. However, when decisions are not so simple, we must employ the techniques described by Levine to assure a proper, well rounded decision gets made.
One important decision that I employed such methods was made many years ago when I worked at a K-12 School District as their Information Technology Coordinator. As the head of the IT department, it was often my decision to shape the direction of technology purchases to assure that taxpayer money was spent wisely and for the betterment of the children in our district. One decision that comes to mind where I had to make such a decision was for applying a standard for the district on which type of interactive white board we were going to use.
In that district, teachers would frequently move rooms between school years, and would request the technology in their new room be the same as it was in their old room. This kept the teacher from having to recreate all of their materials for different technology which is a very laborious process. However, when considering white boards, this particular item was extremely difficult to move, it cost a substantial sum, and assets were assigned to a room not to a teacher. Therefore, during my tenure as the head of Information Technology, I attempted to standardize which technology was installed in our classrooms to minimize the need to uproot classrooms just because a teacher or administrator decided a move was needed.
At that moment in time, there were essentially three choices for interactive whiteboard on the market. SMART Technology's SmartBoard was the name synonymous with the interactive whiteboard market and our school district had 3 already installed in some of our older high tech classrooms. However, there were two other options which were much more cost effective and would have meant I could have outfitted the entire school faster had we used one of those other choices. The need to decide and mandate a standard came when I found out our Upper Elementary library had to be moved for a school year while renovations were being performed on their current library's building. Upon walking in to determine what IT would need to do, I saw one of the other brand's white boards sitting stagnant on the wall. She had money at the end of the previous year and decided she wanted one and somehow it got purchased and installed without my knowledge. This now meant I had two different products in my walls and would now cause me to require consideration of multiple technologies if implementing any district or school wide initiatives. Upon consulting with the librarian, I discovered this company had approached her directly at a time she had extra money and that was how she decided what to purchase. As we have learned from Hoch and Kunreuther (2001) sometimes our decisions get made for us as we are poor decision makers when it comes to retail buying.
Therefore, I decided to have what we called a "shootout". Each vendor who supplied an interactive white board who was on the State of Mississippi's Express Products List was invited to showcase their product to a panel of stakeholders who would then give me their informed recommendation. For this project, each school in our district was to send a teacher, a parent, and an administrator to participate in this committee. We also invited district wide representatives for our office of Special Needs, and the Federal Programs director. The teachers from each school were asked to consider each of the products presented from their perspective as an instructor. The parents were allowed to bring their child(ren) if they so chose, but were asked to consider these products on their ease of use from a child's perspective. The administrators were asked to consider their employee body as a whole to assure this product would be able to be widely implemented and maintained in their school environments. The request for each person to consider a frame (Hoch and Kunreuther, 2001) assured that each set of representatives were truly representing their school and all of its inhabitants.
As each vendor had their opportunity to present their products, the committee was asked to listen to the story being told by each of the representatives who were making their pitch. The committee members were given a rubric of consideration which did not include price and the vendors were instructed not to discuss price in their presentation as I did not want that to skew anyone's preformed opinions on any one product. Each participant in this exercise was encouraged to take notes on the products as we had one vendor scheduled per day and this exercise would be carried out over the course of a week.
Once each vendor had their moment of glory, it was time for deliberation. Our committee assembled once more and this was my opportunity to listen. By listening to each different group's individual inputs, I had the opportunity to not only see these presentations from the frame which I regularly found myself in, but I also had 12 other's. This unique opportunity would give me the most input I had ever experienced and could provide valuable insight (Levine, 2009). Normally, in retail situations, we allow the decision to be made for us and will often not choose the cheapest or the most expensive option. However, in this situation with price not having been discussed, I found those two boards were the front-runners as the mid-line board had many undesirable features. Other districts around the State had chosen that mid-range board and were shocked (but in agreement) that their board was the first eliminated. By listening to each group, I was able to bring their expertise into my decision-making process where otherwise, I would have likely made the decision other districts made and have had to deal with the consequences of a bad decision.
Overall, we decided on the more expensive of the choices at the time. As State purchasing law contends we must purchase the best and lowest cost item, we had made the justification for the best option for our district. Overall, our teachers were happy with the implementation and the boards were used for nearly 8 years before being retired. Having a standard purchase allowed for master trainers to be established and peer based learning to assure our teachers were utilizing this technology in their daily instruction. By listening to each group, all had come to the same decision but each for their own reasons.
In the future, I believe I will continue to use these methods for agreement and resolution. This has its benefit not only in work teams, but in other areas as well. For decisions at home, it is important to get input from each member of the family as these decisions have an effect on the overall happiness of our family unit. A third way I intend on using this in my future is for coming to agreement with myself. I enjoyed Levine's writing (2001) on using this method for setting personal goals and commitments to yourself as I often tend to neglect my own thoughts. The concept of visualizing and getting specific about my goals and crafting an agreement with myself is a new concept that I look forward to implementing in my life to make me a more fulfilled being.
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