The Decision Making Process

When reviewing the decision making process, I think the initial step is the most important of them all. Setting clear goals and objectives is a critical foundation for any successful planning effort. The planning process requires developing strategies for managing, operating and maintaining, in such a way in order to advance the long-term goals. It is important to establish goals and objectives with careful thinking about how they will be used as a foundation for developing performance measures and for measuring performance. Goals and objectives should be developed in conjunction with both internal and external stakeholders.

Assigning an overall importance weighting to the objectives gives the decision makers an idea of what the group as a whole views as the importance of the objectives for the organization. These objectives and their importance also provide the necessary direction and focus in the decision modeling process. You now have a better idea of what you can accomplish as an organization.

Once goals and objectives are identified, it is easier to plan the necessary activities and strategies, as described in Stage 3. If well developed, objectives will specify outcomes, or expected results, and the ways they can be measured (the indicators). Objectives provide  criteria for measuring outreach, and are useful for both the process and summative evaluation phases described in Stage 4.