Strategic decision-making and organizational adaptability in leadership

1 Strategy and Decision Making Strategy is a plan that utilizes a vision of what an organization seeks to achieve and takes this vision of the goals and sets it as an endpoint. A process is then developed whereby the organization can achieve the goals or endpoint identified in the vision. The strategy will take stock of all the resources that are available to the organization at the time, and these resources will factor in to the plan created to achieve the organization’s aims. As Elmes and Barry (2017) point out, strategy is a fluid function and managers must be dynamic and able to adapt their strategy to new inputs. A strategy that is rigid and inflexible is one that is destined to fail at the first hint of challenge or the first obstacle to rear its head. Decision-making is the act of making decisions, especially ones that are of importance to an organization. One who has the capacity to make good decisions given the information available is usually one who will make a good leader or manager in an organization. This skill requires the ability to read a situation, process the data, and formulate an opinion based on the evidence of how to respond or react to the demands of a situation. Betsch (2014) indicates that prior knowledge will often inform a manager or leader when it comes to making decisions, but there are some limitations as to the extent to which such an approach can be useful, for not every situation will be approachable using old inputs that worked in the past. Good decision making requires that leaders effectively be in the present, look at what is going on, what it means, and identify the best options available at the time. I have leveraged strategic decision-making by always making sure I have access to various streams of data and by always being adaptive and flexible when it comes to receiving new inputs or streams of information. Reymen, Andries, Berends, Mauer, Stephan & Van Burg (2015) note than when engaging in strategic decision making a manager has to be flexible and open to unexpected events coming along the way, as these are bound to happen no matter what the venue is. Nothing goes planned perfectly, so a good strategic decision making will plan for the unexpected and always leave some wriggle room. I have tried to do this in the past, but on occasion I have boxed myself into a corner and over-leveraged myself and my team by putting all our eggs in one basket on a project—i.e., by going all in—and when something unexpected came up and I needed to tap additional resources, I was out of them because the budget limit had already been reached. It is necessary to keep from being over-leveraged when making decisions so that the unexpected does not catch you unguarded. My strengths in regard to strategy include my willingness to obtain as much information as possible before I make a decision. I also like to be able to identify my biases so that I am not making a decision based on a similar situation that I once experienced but rather on the information available to me now and the resources I have to draw upon now along with the actual situation as it presents itself currently. Assuming that a new situation, although similar to one in the past, will play out in the same way is to assume too much and set oneself up for failure. My weaknesses in regard to strategy are that I sometimes fail to give myself room for the unexpected. I will allocate all available resources to a project as though it existed in a vacuum, thinking that once it is greenlighted, nothing will come along to disrupt the process—but almost always there is a hiccup. The problem I face is that I become too excited about moving forward and want to get as many people and resources committed to the project beforehand so that they are not scooped up by another project manager and committed elsewhere. Even though there always tend to be available resources when they are needed, I demonstrate a weakness in foresight and planning, so that is something I need to work on. What I hope to gather from this course that will be worthwhile to me in my professional practice is the ability to really develop a strategic decision making mindset—one that helps me to exercise restraint when needed and to move forward fully committed to a vision at the same time. Knowing how to prepare for the unexpected and how to make this concept into policy—or at least personal policy—would be something that I hope to learn. Another skill that I would like to learn is how to balance out all the various inputs that are available and rank them in terms of importance. Sometimes information can come that may seem relevant but when compared to other sources its importance can seem to dwindle.