Decidophobia
Decision making is facing a question, such as "To be or not to be?", i.e., to be the one you want to be or not to be? That is a decision. Humanity has always lived in the shadow of fears. Yet almost nothing was known about fear until Freud made a beginning with the study of unusual phobias. A little later, some psychologists suggested that one dread is common to all mankind: the dread of death.
Decisions, decisions and more decisions! The fear of making serious decisions is a new kind of fear, called decidophobia, proclaimed by Walter Kaufmann in 1973. The fear of making wrong decisions is well known to any responsible manager. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face." Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
In the serious decisions that mold the future of your business, freedom becomes tangible; they are objects of extreme dread. Serious business decisions that ultimately shape, guide, and direct our future are extremely fearful to business leaders.
These decisions involve norms, standards, and the comparison and choice of goals. Learning the structured, well-focused approach to decision making process lessen decidophobia. The gem of Applied Management Science is that it turns the old adage that "business leaders are born, not made" into myth. If one can master management science applications, then no problem is too big nor any decision too overwhelming. The goal of management science experts is to wipe out decidophobia.As a child, it was hard to choose from an assortment of candy bars! Just being worried about making serious decisions is like a rocking chair--it gives you something to do but doesn't get you anywhere. Here is a question for you: Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left? The capacity for protracted decisions brings about commitment to implement them. There is a big difference between making a decision and implementing it.
Unlike deterministic models (risk-free decisions), the outcome of some decisions depends on the second party, as is the case in any advertising campaign strategic decisions in a competitive market. Therefore, one of the characteristics of decision analysis problems is that "good" decision making does not necessarily bring about good outcomes. "How could I have been so stupid?" President John F. Kennedy asked after he approved the Bay of Pigs invasion.
A decision usually involves three stages:
So aside from that, we see that making the correct decisions is not only what we want to do, but incurs what we have to do. This is why the fear of making the wrong decision is what pushes and guides us to making a decision by utilising a scientific approach. This is what Management Science is all about.
Each and every business day the manager puts many decision questions to the test. They must first be identified as problems or opportunities, justified then scaled into mathematical models for which an answer will abound, and then being able to control the problem by updating the solutions because of the dynamic nature of business decisions. Mathematics has been recognised as an autonomous interior constructional activity which, although it can be applied to an exterior world, neither in its origin nor in its methods depends on an exterior world. The criterion of a good
mathematical model is confined to its usefulness in making good strategic decision. This is the absolute core of Management Science approach to decision making, which is the science of decision making.It is this approach to decision making that makes the business into being successful. But it is important to note that such a process does not come easily. Again, this process is of a three-fold origin that encapsulates doctrines of computer integration, mathematical scaling and modeling and finally re-entering new data transformations that will occur as time tics onward. This is the complex analysis that will deduct our thinking in this regard.
Management Science can help reduce or eliminate the fear of making wrong decisions by providing help with decision making process. In fact, management science's goal is to eliminate decidophobia. This is accomplished through the phased processes of management science that dissect the components of the decision into workable elements and allow one to proceed to the decision making stage with sound knowledge to base one's choice. However, if you choose not to use management science, there are plenty of ways to avoid making decisions.