“Stages of Decision-Making” – Prof.M.S.Rao

“Decision making is the specific executive task.” - Peter F. Drucker


We all make decisions in life. But making an effective decision is indeed a tough task in today’s borderless world. The challenge with decision making is that you won’t always have all the data you would like. However you need to make decision within the given constraints. Given below are the stages of decision-making that help in arriving at the right decisions.


Before arriving at the decision, it is necessary to establish a positive, healthy and conducive environment. It helps in free flow of ideas, opinions among the participating members. The leader of the team should not bias the members with his/her own opinions and options as it stifles the decision-making process. Once the stage has been set the members must be allowed to provide divergent shades of opinions through several techniques like brainstorming, Delphi, mind mapping, reverse brainstorming etc., Evaluate the multiple alternatives by weighing the pros and cons through discussion and deliberation and followed by taking a call. Once the decision has been made it is time to check the viability and feasibility of the decision. And communicate the same to the team members and execute the decision. Finally it is time to check the validity and reliability through feedback

The above decision-making process helps in generating qualitative solutions for several business problems.