Overview
Making decisions is at the core of management. To make rational decisions, a manager or an individual must gather as much information as possible about various options and their potential consequences. Before making an important decision, one should evaluate the situation and take steps to prevent falling into decision traps. There can be several traps in decision making, such as overconfidence, a lack of keeping track, or a failure to conduct a decision process audit.

In this activity, you will identify one recent professional situation or problem that required making a decision. The decision could have been posed to a group you were a part of, or it could have been one you made alone. For example, you and your department must decide whether to change the way patient rounds are conducted due to multiple staff reporting burnout in recent weeks. Since you may be using an actual professional or personal scenario, be sure to avoid sharing any personal or confidential information in your submission to protect others’ privacy, such as names of people, places, and designation.

Avoid using a project-related situation or problem; projects require multiple decisions and are dependent on several other factors. If you do not have a professional decision example to analyze, you may use personal experience instead, such as choosing a degree or certification program or buying a car or house.

This activity will help you understand your decision-making habits, which will help you complete the course project. There are no right or wrong answers to this assignment.

Prompt

Complete the Module Two Decision Analysis Worksheet, and then reflect on your learnings and respond to the items in the prompt below in a separate document. You will need to submit both the completed worksheet and your reflection.

Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:

Decision-Making Issue or Problem: Describe the issue or problem requiring a decision that you have selected to analyze. Do not state the decision that was or is being made to solve the issue or problem.
Analysis of an Issue or Problem: Analyze the issue or problem and its potential solutions using your completed Module Two Decision Analysis Worksheet to support your analysis. Substantiate your claim by citing a minimum of one professional source.
Decision Traps: Using the list provided in the Module Two Decision Trap document as a guide, discuss the specific decision trap(s) you and/or your partners encountered during the decision-making process and the impact of those traps on the decision. Consider the following question to guide your response:
How could you or your partners have avoided any of the traps you fell into?
Synopsis of Learning: Summarize how critical analysis and evidence-based decision-making principles influenced your decision making for your selected problem. Consider the following question to guide your response: