My Decision Making Style

After taking the McGraw-Hill Decision Making Style assessment I discovered that my decision making style is Analytical (Management Decision Making Self Assessment). This means that when making decisions I do so based off of fact; I think rationally and can tolerate a high level of ambiguity (Management Decision Making Self Assessment). In an article in the Academy of Management Proceedings, the authors state that analytical decision making, “is usually portrayed as effortful, slow, abstract system operating by means of language, conscious, explicit, computational, rule-governed, and with a very brief evolutionary history,” (Lejarraga & Martinez-Ros, 2008).

Although a bit dry, this could be considered a mediocre way to express this. The authors of the article continue on to also explain that the elements of both intuitive and analytical styles of thinking are involved in almost all decision making and that both methods lie on the opposite, extreme ends of a continuum (Lejarraga & Martinez-Ros, 2008). I find this to be a bit more reasonable. When making decisions, I use all available information and facts to develop the most efficient and effective solution to the problem at hand. More often than not this involves coming up with a new, creative way to incorporate all the facts available, which some may consider to be an intuitive use of the analytical information. I try to let my analytical and technical know how drive my creative problem solving.

The primary strengths of an analytical decision maker are of course that all decisions are based off of factual information thereby making the decision less risky. The downfall would be that sometimes all of the facts are not immediately available and must be collected which leads to a lengthier decision making process. This of course does not have to be the case because I believe that one who truly excels at analytical decision making draws on past knowledge and experience to help fill in on the situations in which the immediate facts are not present.

The McGraw-Hill Decision Making Style assessment states that legendary investor Warren Buffet is also an analytical decision maker and they use a great quote from him that I think sums up all of the strengths of the analytical decision making style:

“And the truth is, you’re neither right nor wrong because people agree with you. You’re right because your facts and your reasoning are right. In the end that’s all that counts,” Warren Buffett (Management Decision Making Self Assessment)

Works Cited

Lejarraga, J., & Martinez-Ros, E. (2008). Comparing Small Vs. Large Firms' R&D Productivity Through a Dual Process Perspective. Academy of Managemnt Proceedings , 1(6).

Management Decision Making Self Assessment. (n.d.). Retrieved 01 28, 2010, from McGraw-Hill Irwin: http://www.mhhe.com/business/management/buildyourmanagementskills/updated_flash/topic10a/quiz.html