5 Levels of Decision Making

Leaders make solid decisions and commit to seeing them through. Losers put off decisions and mess around with them once they are made. A key skill in becoming a successful leader is the skill of decision making. It is surprising how many people don't like to make decisions. They do all kinds of things to keep the moment of decision at arms length including: gathering more data, talking to more people, not thinking about the decision, fretting over who the decision might offend, worrying about the resources needed to pull the decision off, hoping the problem will go away on its own, etc. Good leaders develop the skill of making the best decision possible with the best information possible in the timeliest manner. They are quick to decide and quick to take responsibility for their decisions - positive or negative.
Successful leaders have learned that action is vital. They know procrastination kills. There live with the reality of consequences and know there will always be uncertainty in decisions. No one can see all possible ramifications; no one can predict every contingency; no one can absolutely prevent failure. Leaders know that failure is not final, it is a learning opportunity. The real danger surrounding decision making is not "will I make the wrong decision" but "did I make the best decision possible given the facts and circumstances". Strong leaders will always recover from poor decisions - they learn and become wiser. But losers will mess around and miss opportunities. And once they finally make a decision, chances are their decision will have no momentum, no passion and no urgency.
In addition to a bias for action, good decision makers approach decision making with some foundational strategies. These strategies can best be summed up with three questions:
1. What is the downside? If the liability involved is significant, and is even marginally possible, then the decision is "no, go find other options." One of the leader's most important jobs is to protect the organization. Exposing the organization to undue risk is never wise.
2. What is the cost/benefit ratio? Every decision is a trade-off between costs (usually company resources) and benefits (usually claims aimed at increasing company resources). Smart leaders use the cost/benefit ratio to leverage growth and profitability. Good decisions are highly leveraged with low cost/high benefit. Poor decisions are high cost/low benefit. When leaders find low cost/high benefit opportunities (with minor liability of course) the decision is, "Yes, let's do it."
3. Who needs to be involved with this decision?Good leaders understand that making decisions goes far beyond being in charge and calling the shots. Decision making is also one of the best developmental tools at their disposal. In order to create momentum around decisions the leader must cultivate commitment. Asking for input, especially from key stakeholders, is critical for momentum and effective implementation.
The Five Levels of Decision Making
The following are five levels of involvement leaders use when deciding who should be part of the decision making process:
Level One: Leader makes the decision alone.This is used especially in emergency situations where immediate action is critical. Input is not helpful, quick action and immediate compliance is what counts.
Level Two: Leader makes the decision with input from key stakeholders. The leader seeks input, usually to cover blind spots and enhance their depth of understanding around the issue to be decided. Stakeholders hold important information and not consulting them would be foolish.
Level Three: Consensus building - leader gets final say.Leader solicits input from a variety of sources, builds consensus around a specific direction, allows the group to make a recommendation of which the leader must finally approve. This level takes considerable skill and is where developing leaders often make mistakes. Solid decision makers are well versed in the skill sets of this level.
Level Four: Delegate the decision to someone else. The authority and responsibility are clearly shifted away from the leader (usually to a direct report). Both the leader and the direct report live with the consequences - good or bad. The leader reviews the decision, but does not change it and uses it as an opportunity for development.
Level Five: True consensus.Leader fully delegates the decision to a group (usually a committee). If the leader is part of the committee then he/she is just one vote among many. The group processes all the decisions involved, compromises positions until everyone is in agreement.
Strong leaders understand the process decisions must go through to be effective. As leaders move higher in organizations the demand upon their time and influence also increases. The temptation to use the power of position to make things happen is high. Rookie leaders will often get caught in this trap and learn expensive lessons when decisions go bad. Hopefully you can avoid these mistakes and make effective decision by using the three questions

Positive Thinking... a key to success

Positive thinking brings inner peace, success, improved relationships, better health, happiness and satisfaction. It also helps the daily affairs of life move more smoothly, and makes life look bright and promising.
Positive thinking is contagious. People around you pick your mental moods and are affected accordingly. Think about happiness, good health and success, and you will cause people to like you and desire to help you, because they enjoy the vibrations that a positive mind emits.
In order to make positive thinking yield results, you need to develop a positive attitude toward life, expect a successful outcome of whatever you do, but also take any necessary actions to ensure your success.
Effective positive thinking that brings results is much more than just repeating a few positive words, or telling yourself that everything is going to be all right. It has to be your predominant mental attitude. It is not enough to think positively for a few moments, and then letting fears and lack of belief enter your mind. Some effort and inner work are necessary.Are you willing to make a real inner change?Are you willing to change the way you think?Are you willing to develop a mental power that can positively affect you, your environment and the people around you?
Here are a few actions and tips to help you develop the power of positive thinking: Always use only positive words while thinking and while talking. Use words such as, 'I can', 'I am able', 'it is possible', 'it can be done', etc. Allow into your awareness only feelings of happiness, strength and success. Try to disregard and ignore negative thoughts. Refuse to think such thoughts, and substitute them with constructive happy thoughts. In your conversation use words that evoke feelings and mental images of strength, happiness and success. Before starting with any plan or action, visualize clearly in your mind its successful outcome. If you visualize with concentration and faith, you will be amazed at the results. Read at least one page of inspiring book every day. Watch movies that make you feel happy. Minimize the time you listen to the news and read the papers. Associate yourself with people who think positively. Always sit and walk with your back straight. This will strengthen your confidence and inner strength. Walk, swim or engage in some other physical activity. This helps to develop a more positive attitude.
Think positive and expect only favorable results and situations, even if your current circumstances are not as you wish them to be. In time, your mental attitude will affect your life and circumstances and change them accordingly.

Prefer pink slips over pay cuts

The argument still stands valid that the market is still growing. There will never be a dearth of jobs and they will continue to boom with more and more competitors big or small landing up in the market. What an organization must understand is the individual’s psyche. If a worker who has cut through event after event to get into an organization is just handed over a pink slip, is bound to retaliate.

On the contrary if the same individual is asked to leave stating the reasons politely with no harm done to his formal report and more options in terms of job opportunities is given to him, one would surely not mind. After all, more than a majority of Workforce chucks off their old jobs whenever they come across a new and better paying one.
The crux of the whole thing is to think like the ones you are dealing with. Get down to their ways of dealing and it will help to reach conclusions to a greater extent.

Green IT... A concept... a way

Data center energy savings are a huge opportunity. Data centers consume more energy per square foot than any other part of an office building. But they're part of an information and services supply chain that begins with raw materials and ends with the disposal of waste. The chain includes people, the space they occupy, and the cars they drive. Along the way, the chain increasingly gobbles energy and spews greenhouse gases.

Energy consumption in the data center is predominantly from two loads: servers and cooling. Increasing server density compounds the problem. A Gartner poll showed that more than 69 percent of data centers are constrained for power, cooling and space.

Energy-efficient servers are available from the major vendors, most notably Sun's Cool Threads technology that Sun says makes servers more efficient by a factor of five. Efficient processors from IBM, AMD and Intel are making their way into the mainstream, so your favorite server will soon be available in green.

The payoff of efficient servers is twofold. Servers that consume less energy also throw off less heat, requiring less energy for cooling. Alternative approaches, including ice storage and geothermal energy, accept the heat and focus directly on reducing the cost of cooling the data center.

Reducing cooling loads gets the attention of utilities because their summer peak demand periods are caused by air conditioning. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), one of the largest natural gas and electric utilities in the United States serving 350,000 California businesses, is offering $1,000 rebates for buying efficient servers that generate less heat.

Outside the data center, PC workstations make a contribution to US companies' power bills. It's not the 100 watts they consume, it's the sheer number of them out there. The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance concluded that the average consumption could be shaved by about 25 percent through effective use of power management tools.

The state of the art in this niche is driven primarily by the demand for a set-it-and-forget-it solution. Workers don't want power management to intrude on their day, and IT doesn't want complaints to intrude on theirs. The result is network-based power management software.

Would centralized sleep control be beneficial to your network? One way to find out is to install Verdiem's Surveyor demo without turning it on. Then use the "prediction" function to calculate the potential savings of each profile. Users will be unaffected and unaware of the test, and you'll have a good idea of the effectiveness in your situation.

Cloud computing.... 8th Wonder ...

Cloud computing is a computing paradigm in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network. This network of servers and connections is collectively known as "the cloud." Computing at the scale of the cloud allows users to access supercomputer-level power. Users can access resources as they need them. (For this reason, cloud computing has also been described as "on-demand computing.")

This vast processing power is made possible though distributed, large-scale cluster computing, often in concert with server virtualization software, like Xen, and parallel processing. Cloud computing can be contrasted with the traditional desktop computing model, where the resources of a single desktop computer are used to complete tasks, and an expansion of the client/server model. To paraphrase Sun Microsystems' famous adage, in cloud computing the network becomes the supercomputer.

Cloud computing is often used to sort through enormous amounts of data. In fact, Google has an initial edge in cloud computing precisely because of its need to produce instant, accurate results for millions of incoming search inquires every day, parsing through the terabytes of Internet data cached on its servers. Google's approach has been to design and manufacture hundreds of thousands of its own servers from commodity components, connecting relatively inexpensive processors in parallel to create an immensely powerful, scalable system. Google Apps, Maps and Gmail are all based in the cloud. Other companies have already created Web-based operating systems that collect online applications into Flash-based graphic user interfaces (GUIs), often using a look and feel intentionally quite similar to Windows. Hundreds of organizations are already offering free Web services in the cloud.

In many ways, however, cloud computing is simply a buzzword used to repackage grid computing and utility computing, both of which have existed for decades. Like grid computing, cloud computing requires the use of software that can divide and distribute components of a program to thousands of computers. New advances in processors, virtualization technology, disk storage, broadband Internet access and fast, inexpensive servers have all combined to make cloud computing a compelling paradigm. Cloud computing allows users and companies to pay for and use the services and storage that they need, when they need them and, as wireless broadband connection options grow, where they need them. Customers can be billed based upon server utlilization, processing power used or bandwidth consumed. As a result, cloud computing has the potential to upend the software industry entirely, as applications are purchased, licensed and run over the network instead of a user's desktop. This shift will put data centers and their administrators at the center of the distributed network, as processing power, electricity, bandwidth and storage are all managed remotely.

Just In Time......

It originally referred to the production of goods to meet customer demand exactly, in time, quality and quantity, whether the `customer' is the final purchaser of the product or another process further along the production line.

It has now come to mean producing with minimum waste. "Waste" is taken in its most general sense and includes time and resources as well as materials. Elements of JIT include:

• Continuous improvement.
• Attacking fundamental problems - anything that does not add value to the product.
• Devising systems to identify problems.
• Striving for simplicity - simpler systems may be easier to understand, easier to manage and less likely to go wrong.
• A product oriented layout - produces less time spent moving of materials and parts.
• Quality control at source - each worker is responsible for the quality of their own output.
• Poka-yoke - `foolproof' tools, methods, jigs etc. prevent mistakes
• Preventative maintenance, Total productive maintenance - ensuring machinery and equipment functions perfectly when it is required, and continually improving it.
• Eliminating waste. There are seven types of waste:
• waste from overproduction.
• waste of waiting time.
• transportation waste.
• processing waste.
• inventory waste.
• waste of motion.
• waste from product defects.
• Good housekeeping - workplace cleanliness and organisation.

Set-up time reduction - increases flexibility and allows smaller batches. Ideal batch size is 1item. Multi-process handling - a multi-skilled workforce has greater productivity, flexibility and job satisfaction.

• Levelled / mixed production - to smooth the flow of products through the factory.
• Kanbans - simple tools to `pull' products and components through the process.
• Jidoka (Autonomation) - providing machines with the autonomous capability to use judgement, so workers can do more useful things than standing watching them work.

Andon (trouble lights) - to signal problems to initiate corrective action.


JIT HISTORY

JIT is a Japanese management philosophy which has been applied in practice since the early 1970s in many Japanese manufacturing organisations. It was first developed and perfected within the Toyota manufacturing plants by Taiichi Ohno as a means of meeting consumer demands with minimum delays . Taiichi Ohno is frequently referred to as the father of JIT.

Toyota was able to meet the increasing challenges for survival through an approach that focused on people, plants and systems. Toyota realised that JIT would only be successful if every individual within the organisation was involved and committed to it, if the plant and processes were arranged for maximum output and efficiency, and if quality and production programs were scheduled to meet demands exactly.

JIT manufacturing has the capacity, when properly adapted to the organisation, to strengthen the organisation's competitiveness in the marketplace substantially by reducing wastes and improving product quality and efficiency of production.

There are strong cultural aspects associated with the emergence of JIT in Japan. The Japanese work ethic involves the following concepts.

• Workers are highly motivated to seek constant improvement upon that which already exists. Although high standards are currently being met, there exist even higher standards to achieve.
• Companies focus on group effort which involves the combining of talents and sharing knowledge, problem-solving skills, ideas and the achievement of a common goal.
• Work itself takes precedence over leisure. It is not unusual for a Japanese employee to work 14-hour days.
• Employees tend to remain with one company throughout the course of their career span. This allows the opportunity for them to hone their skills and abilities at a constant rate while offering numerous benefits to the company.

These benefits manifest themselves in employee loyalty, low turnover costs and fulfilment of company goals.

Outsourcing..... a way of life...

So, what is outsourcing? Outsourcing is contracting with another company or person to do a particular function. Almost every organization outsources in some way. Typically, the function being outsourced is considered non-core to the business. An insurance company, for example, might outsource its janitorial and landscaping operations to firms that specialize in those types of work since they are not related to insurance or strategic to the business. The outside firms that are providing the outsourcing services are third-party providers, or as they are more commonly called, service providers.

Although outsourcing has been around as long as work specialization has existed, in recent history, companies began employing the outsourcing model to carry out narrow functions, such as payroll, billing and data entry. Those processes could be done more efficiently, and therefore more cost-effectively, by other companies with specialized tools and facilities and specially trained personnel.

Currently, outsourcing takes many forms. Organizations still hire service providers to handle distinct business processes, such as benefits management. But some organizations outsource whole operations. The most common forms are information technology outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO).

Business process outsourcing encompasses call center outsourcing, human resources outsourcing (HRO), finance and accounting outsourcing, and claims processing outsourcing. These outsourcing deals involve multi-year contracts that can run into hundreds of millions of dollars. Frequently, the people performing the work internally for the client firm are transferred and become employees for the service provider. Dominant outsourcing service providers in the information technology outsourcing and business process outsourcing fields include IBM, EDS, CSC, HP, ACS, Accenture and Capgemini.

Some nimble companies that are short on time and money, such as start-up software publishers, apply multisourcing -- using both internal and service provider staff -- in order to speed up the time to launch. They hire a multitude of outsourcing service providers to handle almost all aspects of a new project, from product design, to software coding, to testing, to localization, and even to marketing and sales.

The process of outsourcing generally encompasses four stages: 1) strategic thinking, to develop the organization's philosophy about the role of outsourcing in its activities; 2) evaluation and selection, to decide on the appropriate outsourcing projects and potential locations for the work to be done and service providers to do it; 3) contract development, to work out the legal, pricing and service level agreement (SLA) terms; and 4) outsourcing management or governance, to refine the ongoing working relationship between the client and outsourcing service providers.

In all cases, outsourcing success depends on three factors: executive-level support in the client organization for the outsourcing mission; ample communication to affected employees; and the client's ability to manage its service providers. The outsourcing professionals in charge of the work on both the client and provider sides need a combination of skills in such areas as negotiation, communication, project management, the ability to understand the terms and conditions of the contracts and service level agreements (SLAs), and, above all, the willingness to be flexible as business needs change.

The challenges of outsourcing become especially acute when the work is being done in a different country (offshored), since that involves language, cultural and time zone differences.

Market Competetion... perfect or monopolistic

The business community continually changes and ownership of businesses change hands as smaller entities are swallowed up by bigger corporations. We hear about it all the time in the news, but yet very few people can name a example of monopolistic competition, or realise what the definition monopolistic competition is. This article gives a brief insight into the definition monopolistic competition and monopolistic competitive firm.

The definition monopolistic competition is firms which in effect hold a monopoly over their products, in that the firm is able to influence the market price of its product by altering the rate of production. Monopolistic competitive firms produce products that are not perfect substitutes or are at least perceived to be different to all other brands products.

Unlike in perfect competition, the monopolistic competitive firm does not produce at the lowest possible average total cost. Instead, the firm produces at an inefficient output level, reaping more in additional revenue than it incurs in additional cost versus the efficient output level.

It could be said, to name a example of monopolistic competition, firms who control oil production or gas production are monopolistic. They produce identical products except for branding, but due to a relatively low number of firms who control the vast amount of the product, can control the price to an extent by decreasing supply slightly.

The opposite of monopolistic competition is perfect competition. Perfect competition is an economic model that describes a hypothetical market form in which no producer or consumer has the market power to influence prices. While monopolistic competition is inefficient, perfect competition is the most efficient, with supply meeting demand and production therefore matching this, so stock is not sat in storage for prolonged periods or going to waste.

An example of a perfect competition is some agricultural markets, where supply is to meet demand. However, this example is not strictly the case in places such as Europe, where subsidies are provided encouraging farmers to produce as much as possible regardless of demand.

Perhaps the best examples of perfect competition companies would be large auctions of identical goods with all potential buyers and sellers present. By definition, a stock exchange resembles this. The flaw in considering the stock exchange as an example of Perfect Competition is the fact that large institutional investors (e.g. investment banks) may solely influence the market price. This, of course, violates the condition that "no one seller can influence market price".

Qualities of an Innovator

The word "innovate" can be traced all the way back to 1440. It comes from the Middle French word "innovacyon" meaning "renewal" or "new way of doing things." Exactly what innovations actually happened in 1440 (rounder oxcart wheels?) is anybody's guess, but whatever they were, it's likely they improved the quality of life for more than a few people.

These days, the "innovation thing" is something of a no-brainer. Indeed, it seems that any company worth its low-salt lunch has identified innovation as a core competency worth developing. Who in their right mind (or is it right brain?) can deny the value of improving things? Isn't this what human beings -- those grand inventors of the microchip and the chocolate chip -- are supposed to do?

True. But who has time?

And so begins the search for the magic pill.

Unfortunately, innovation, unlike audits or reengineering, is not given to formulas. It is given to people -- restless, inspired, fascinated individuals with an almost cellular need for change. And while it can be supported by systems, it can never be reduced to systems. "Innovation," as Tom Peters so aptly put it, "is a messy business."

If you want to spark innovation, forget about slick formulas for a minute and pay attention to what's happening on the inside. Because that's where it starts. With the innovator -- the inspired individual who sees a better way and goes for it. And the key to the innovator? The special blend of inner qualities that allows him or her to succeed when others have long since gone home. Tools? Techniques? Five-step models? Sure, they're useful. But, without the user of them having the right stuff, they're merely decoration -- not unlike having a new set of jumper cables, but no car.

So ... if you are one of the self-chosen few willing to stop blaming your organization and start taking personal responsibility for innovating, here's a list of qualities that describe innovators:

Challenges status quo -- dissatisfied with current reality, questions authority and routine and confronts assumptions.

Curious -- actively explores the environment, investigates new possibilities, and honors the sense of awe and wonder.

Self-motivated -- responds to deep inner needs, proactively initiates new projects, intrinsically rewarded for efforts.

Visionary -- highly imaginative, maintains a future orientation, thinks in mental pictures.

Entertains the fantastic -- conjures outrageous scenarios, sees possibilities within the seemingly impossible, honors dreams and daydreams.

Takes risks -- goes beyond the comfort zone, experimental and non- conform- ing, courageously willing to "fail."

Peripatetic -- changes work environments as needed; wanders, walks or travels to inspire fresh thinking; given to movement and interaction.

Playful/humorous -- appreciates incongruities and surprise, able to appear foolish and child-like, laughs easily and often.

Self-accepting -- withholds compulsive criticism of their own ideas, understands "perfection is the enemy of the good," unattached to "looking good" in the eyes of others.

Flexible/adaptive -- open to serendipity and change, able to adjust "game plan" as needed, entertains multiple ideas and solutions.

Makes new connections -- sees relationships between seemingly disconnected elements, synthesizes odd combinations, distills unusual ideas down to their underlying principles.

Reflective -- incubates on problems and challenges; seeks out states of immersion; ponders, muses and contemplats.

Recognizes (and re-cognizes) patterns -- perceptive and discriminating, notices organizing principles and trends, sees (and challenges) the "Big Picture."

Tolerates ambiguity -- comfortable with chaos, able to entertain paradox, doesn't settle for the first "right idea."

Committed to learning -- continually seeks knowledge, synthesizes new input quickly, balances information gathering and action.

Balances intuition and analysis -- alternates between divergent and convergent thinking; entertains hunches before analyzing them; trusts their gut, uses their head.

Situationally collaborative -- balances rugged individualism with political savvy, open to coaching and support, rallies organizational support as needed.

Formally articulate -- communicates ideas effectively, translates abstract concepts into meaningful language, creates prototypes with ease.

Resilient -- bounces back from disappointment, learns quickly from feedback, willing to "try, try again."

Persevering -- hardworking and persistent, champions new ideas with tenacity, committed to follow-through and bottom-line results.

Some of these traits may be easy for you while others are more difficult. That's normal ... even if you weren't "born" with some of these traits, you can develop them. Perhaps even more important, you can help create an environment where these traits can flourish.