As stated in the Harvard Business Review, “Effective leaders learn to shift decision-making styles to match changing business environments.” By identifying the approach that matches the environment, leaders are able to make decisions that do not only address the situation at hand, but allows others involved to make meaningful decisions that support the business environment, too. A lot of the time these decision making styles take a situation into another type of situation where a more successful decision can be made.
On page 7 of the HBR, it tells us that in order to make a decision in a chaotic situation we must re-gain command and turn take the environment from chaotic to complex and then if possible from complex into a simple situation. I can relate this to a situation I was in just recently where I came into a chaotic environment and had to turn it into a complex environment in order to make the correct decisions. You may or may not know that January is the toughest month for Financial Aid because of all of the new terms and tracks that start the New Year for the financial aid awards. This so happened to be the month where my daughter has been sick the most since she has been born. To make a long story short I had no choice, but to take time from work to care for my child as any mothers would do. This quickly created a mess with my financial aid region because I was unable to communicate and adhere to the requests of students and faculty alike. All other counselors were also feeling the pressure at this time, so they had little time to allocate to my region so things quickly got behind. I returned to work a week after the term began and was overwhelmed with work, my emails were endless, and my answering machine had over 50 messages from students and faculty about the funds that were suppose to hit their accounts. Needless to say this environment was very chaotic, and I could not satisfy all of the needs for those within my region. I made the decision to listen to voicemails and scan through emails to determine the most critical needs versus the issues that were just purely for one’s piece of mind (although very important issues, not being affected by timeliness). This process took nearly a day, but by doing so I knew what issues took priority over all others and could easily identify these cases. By this point other counselors had additional time to help me, so with the organization of these issues I was able to successfully delegate to them and satisfy the students and faculties needs in a timely manner.
Another part of my job that would be identified as a complicated environment is the verification process. Reviewing a student’s FASFA involves required procedures that we as counselors, must follow to check eligibility, identify an awards package, and then process a student’s account. There is a lot of room for error in this process by both the student who completes the FASFA and the counselor that reviews it and lines out an award package for the student. The FASFA contains very sensitive material about the students and also their family as well, so it is important that we do a detailed job inputting the information and more importantly handling these sensitive documents. Each time we submit the FASFA to the Department of Education, a few things can happen that are out of our control, first a student can be randomly selected to submit additional information that validate the information submitted on the FASFA, or second, they may have parts of the FASFA that are not consistent with other area and it raises a ‘red flag’. This is what is known as the Verification Process; at this point the FASFA becomes much more extensive and time consuming on the students behalf, which leads to frustration and conflict. It is important for us counselors to do a very detailed job reviewing the students account and communicating with them to help identify the areas that are lacking or inconsistent to try and prevent any red flags that would cause the student to be selected for verification. When a student is selected for the verification process it is completely out of our hands, so we do our jobs knowing that this selection by the Department of Education is unknown and we do everything possible to help the student get through the process.
The Cynefin Framework is a methodology that helps us identify the situation we are in and the best approach to making decisions within that situation. Identifying that if a situation is ‘known’ we do not need to add much thought other than our standard operating procedure should create a positive outcome. If we find ourselves in a ‘knowable’ situation than simply thinking of scenarios and evaluating the possible outcomes is a suitable approach to making your decision. However, when we find ourselves in a ‘complex’ situation, identifying patterns and asking questions of others is going to be a normal reaction when trying to come to a decision. And when faced with a ‘chaotic’ situation it is important to stay calm and find a way to bring the situation at least into a complex state where evaluation can occur and the steps to making an effective decision are possible.
Snowden, D.J., and Boone, M.E. (2007). A leaders framework for decision making. Havard Business Review. Retrieved from http://www.mpiweb.org/CMS/uploadedFiles/Article%20for%20Marketing%20-%20Mary%20Boone.pdf
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