How Can Leaders be More Objective

Vroom-Yetton Decision Making

At my firm, management had to make the decision about whether to increase production or not. Their decision-making style was autocratic, meaning that they alone made the decision without consulting with others or taking group input into account. The reasoning behind this decision was likely that they felt they had the knowledge and expertise to make the best decision for the company. Additionally, they may have felt that consulting with others would have taken too much time and delayed the decision-making process.

While an autocratic decision-making style can be efficient, it can also be risky, as it does not allow for dissenting opinions or alternative solutions to be considered. In this case, management may have benefited from a more consultative or group-based approach, because in the end, they increased production without realizing that the surge in consumption was due to a one-time event that had nothing to do with changing demographics or a substantial shift in buying trends. Thus, management had to deal with excess inventory when the event was over and basically created a problem for themselves that could have been avoided if they had simply engaged in some consultative decision-making.

The problem process did not necessarily have any quality requirement associated with it. It was simply a matter of understanding demand, which means management could have just asked for information from the sales department and made an autocratic decision. According the Vroom-Yetton model, their approach could have remained autocratic in this manner. It was not something that required a great deal of commitment from the team, other than in terms of upping production. They had to shift resources slightly to increase production but it was not a major drain on other departments. Thus, an autocratic approach to decision-making would have been fine in this regard, too, based on the model.

The only major thing was the lack of leader’s information. The management team should have realized the impact of the one-off event on sales, and this would have told them that there was no need to increase production. They did not have that information and did not seek it out. This is why some consultative approach to leadership would have been effective—but had the leaders had the necessary information or realized that they had access to it, the model shows that they could have proceeded in their autocratic course.

The problem was structured and simple to comprehend and thus did not require a great deal of minds to figure out the correct solution. It was just a matter of having all the facts plainly before one’s eyes and acting on those facts. Goal congruence and subordinate conflict, additionally, did not pose any problems for management, and would not have been reasons for adopting a different decision-making approach to the autocratic process recommended by the model.

I do not think I would recommend the Vroom-Yetton model to my supervisor because it is easy to miss an important component that might seem small and insignificant at the time of consideration. For instance, the model suggests that the autocratic approach is appropriate—so long as the leaders obtain the necessary information to make a good decision. But the leaders think they already have all the information they need. In their subjective bias, they fail to consider that there is some other data out there that would alter their perception.

The model is helpful if one is being objective about where one is and what one can do. But if one is making this decision from a subjective standpoint, I do not see how the model can be entirely helpful. If there is an independent, neutral third party making the decision then perhaps the model has some merit. This independent review can help, as it did Son with the Sprint/T-Mobile deal (De La Merced, 2014). Ultimately, the decision-making process requires diagnosis that has to be rooted in neutrality (Rigolosi, 2005).

I was not surprised by the recommendation given by this model regarding decision-making style because it made sense and was rational. My problem is that leaders can be irrational and biased at times and therefore do not realize when they are making a blunder as they had no thought for their own limitations. Yes, leaders can learn to lead and often do (Vroom, 1976). However, I feel that is more a response to real world practice, of leaders getting experience and understanding that they do have limitations and that they do need to be objective in decision-making matters. Models can help so long as leaders admit their limitations and take an objective approach to the process, but if they are not going to do this, they invite trouble for themselves.