Decision-Making Process

MGT/230
October 7, 2013

Decision-Making Process
One of the toughest decisions I had to make in my professional career was closing my title insurance company Harbor Title, Inc. Harbor Title had been open for seven years, and for the last twelve months of its existence, suffered extreme financial loss.
In our text we are presented with a decision making process that consists of six steps, I plan to evaluate my decision to close Harbor Title using that process.

Identifying and Diagnosing the Problem
In our text, we learn that identifying a problem is only the beginning, “the decision maker must dig in deeper and attempt to diagnose the situation” (Bateman & Snell, 2011, p 89.). I had to examine the affect the economy and the real estate market was having on my business, and if we would be able to recover. There was a lot of “scenarios” played out to see if there was any other solution.

Generating Alternative Solutions
“The second stage of decision making links problem diagnosis to the development of alternative courses of action aimed at solving the problem” (Bateman & Snell, 2011, p 90.). The text goes on to discuss “ready made solutions”, those you have tried before and “custom made solutions” new ideas to solve the existing problem. I don’t believe that I had many “ready made solutions”, but I created many “custom made solutions” to try and creatively save my company. It is amazing how creative one can become when you don’t want to loose something you worked so hard to create. Some alternatives included;

Going in with another business (being bought out)
Adding my mother to my business to reduce the cost of my bonds
Giving a share of my business to a local attorney (reduce bond costs)
Borrowing “more” money

Evaluating Alternatives
As I began to generating possible solutions, I had to evaluate the possible outcomes of putting these alternatives into place. As we learn in our text, one has to try and determine what the outcome of using these alternative solutions will be and how it will affect the outcome of your product or service. I was already in debt so borrowing money was not a reasonable option, especially since the real estate market was in a downward spiral, without a definitive sign of recovery. The other options required “deals” to be made, and some of the repercussions of those deals, were not worth it if things continued to go south.

Making the Choice “Paralysis by analysis” is a great quote the author made to describe the decision making process. Sometimes we analysis so much and then can’t make a decision. If it is a decision one does not want to make, it can be even harder to do what is necessary. It can cause a lot of “flip flop” decisions as