Nik Is a New Hire for Wal-mart.

Nik is a new hire for Wal-Mart. As project manager in the public relations department he will work with Alex who is director of strategic planning in Kava. Despite Kava having experienced tidal waves, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and fatal diseases such as HIV / AIDS and is at high risk for avian flu, its residents are still attached to the island, for Kava has a reputation of being a paradise. Yet when Nik arrived, he found only problems. His new home was disappointing.

The office was a mess and shabby, and Alex seems to be his sole assistant. Nik's instinctive response would be to throw in the towel. How could he found a Wal-Mart in this under resourced place that has more problems that he can put his hands around. Nik would have to retain his composure at all costs and delineate his problems, and decision-making provides him with effective strategies where so he can do so.

Nik might be advised to use the Grid Analysis, otherwise known as the Decision Matrix Analysis, Pugh Matrix Analysis, and Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) The Grid Analysis is particularly useful when one has many different factors to choose from, many different decisions to make, and one isn't exactly sure where to start. The Grid Analysis helps one see one's decisions clearly and to prioritize.

The Grid Analysis works in the following way: Nikl lists his options as rows on a table, and the factors that he needs to consider as columns. He then scores each option/factor combination, weighs this score by the relative importance of the factor, and adds up these scores to give an overall score for each option. To elaborate: 1. Nik lists his options as row labels on the table and his factors that he needs to consider as column headings. 2. He scores each option for each of the factors.

The scale ranges from 0=poor to 5= very important / very good 3. Next, he works out the relative importance of the factors in his decision, again from 0 to 5, where 0 denotes that the factor is insignificant in the long run whereas 5 would show that the item / decision is crucial to organization. 4. Now he multiplies each of the scores of step 2 by the values of relative importance in step 3. 5.

He adds up the weighted scores for each of these options, and those that score the highest are priorities that Nik knows he should focus on first. To illustrate: Nik has a huge task ahead of him. These are his factors: He has to set up a Wal-Mart from scratch, market the store, hire people, renovate the building, set up living quarters for himself and Alex, procure merchandise and so forth. The options that Nik needs to consider are time; cost, ability, cultural factors etc. Swamped, Nick has to prioritize.

Firstly, he draws up a grid and scores.