Slide 1 : Good evening and Welcome to this presentation on Decision making.

Let me ask you a

question. If there are 5 frogs on a lily-pad and two decide to jump into water and one jumps into
water how many frogs decided not to jump? Well the answer is insufficient information.

Slide2: Let me narrate a small story. A man in a desert who is hungry and thirsty with no food and
water stocks, Lost his way in the desert. Exhausted and desperate he was looking for source of water
in the vast desert. Suddenly he saw a hut in the distance and somehow managed to reach the hut.
There was a water pump outside and was about to collapse and he pumped, but there was no water.
Desperate for water he looked inside the hut and found a bottle of water with a note below. Note
read – “Pour this water into pump to prime it and then quench your thirst and please fill up this
bottle and keep it here for others. The next water availability is 10 kms away.” He is in a dilemma to
decide. Either to quench his thirst with available water or risk priming the pump and see whether
water gushes out.

Slide 3 Let us look at another example. A covid19 health center in your city. There is a nurse in
charge of patients and there are minimum 8 patients to cater to and many of them are suffering and
asking for immediate help. She has to make operational decisions. There is this manager trying to
pacify a crowd demanding vaccination. He has to adopt tactics to avoid nuisance and violence at the
center. There is this Director of health center coordinating emergency messages flowing into war
room. He has to make strategic decisions. The Nurse, Manager and Director all have to make
decisions - under severe stress and pressure. Welcome to topic of the day decision making. The
scenarios and examples are all about either individual surviving or individuals being saved by giving
them hope of survival by making right decisions.

Slide4: Decisions are essential parts of our life. We exercise choice all the time and we make
judgment based on our options available many times in our daily routine life. Is decision making
merely exercising choice or passing judgment? No it is much more than this.

Slide5: If decisions are essential part of our life, then what is decision making?

a. It is a competence. Meaning it has skills, knowledge and attitude all rolled into the
competency.
b. It is a process. There is a problem. It has to be solved. There is a choice or option. That has to
be exercised. There are certain actions that are necessary. So Decision making is a process.
The outcome of the process is the outcome of the decisions made. Outcome can be good or
bad. The outcome is unknown till implemented. Sometimes not acting too is a good
outcome.
c. As seen in examples decisive behavior needs to be demonstrated in any given situation,
context and time for an expected outcome.
d. We call the behavior of making decisions and acting on them as being DECISIVE.

Slide6: What is the opposite behavior of being DECISIVE? It is Indecision.

SLIDE 7: According to 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan, there is a paradigm he discusses.
If a hungry donkey is placed between two nutritious hay stacks, the DONKEY will fail to decide which
stack to eat from and keeps switching its preference till it dies of hunger. We see this Buridan’s
Donkey situation in many times in life too. It is indecisive behavior. Like switching lanes in at a toll
plaza or switching queues to get a ticket quickly. Also like American congress not able to decide
between Panama or Nicargua canal for 67 years.
Slide 8: What are the consequences of INDECISION. I give two business and one real life example.
Xerox had the patent for Personal Computer in late sixties and had a working prototype Alpha PC in
middle of 70’s. But it did not commercialize. However Apple and IBM commercialized the product.
Same Xerox failed to enter mobile market in 1980 based on McKinsey’s report which said the global
demand of cell phones is only 900,000.

Slide 9: The recent one is when cyclone hit West Coast AFCONS’s barge P-305 did not heed to
cyclone warnings and the barge sank and putting into peril 261 lives on board. All ONGC employees.
49 persihed, 180 were rescued and many missing as per last reports. The Captain of the barge was
arrested for criminal negligence.

Slide 10: What is Business decision making in Business context?

Slide11: Any business has a business model including our primary healthcare. There are some value
propositions healthcare offers to the patients. It is driven by 9 key elements of any business model.
Value in the centre – Key suppliers, activities, resources and cost on left side and Channels, Key
relationships, customers and Revenue on the right side.

Slide 12: The typical business decisions are based on WHO, what, Where, When, How Much of the
elements of business model. This is what people in all roles in the organization decide– operational,
tactical and strategic decisions.

Slide 13: There are there problems in the process of decision making- gathering information or
preparing, arriving at viable options based on uncertainty of outcomes and impact of decisions made
good or bad based on information available at that time.

Slide 14: Pictorial representation of decision making process.

Slide 15: There are many barriers to decision making some of them are BIAS, sufficiency of
information and ethical or unethical based on values of organization

Slide16: Classification of decisions based on Knowns and unknowns –1. Bottom LEFT. WE Know the
outcome and the risk associated KNOWN KNOWN. Example tossing of a coin or a game. 2. Right
bottom. Know the outcomes but do not know how much and when. Example Stock market. . 3. TOP
LEFT. We know the best option but do not know the outcome. Example catching a ball in air or
American airlines Flight 1549 landing safely in Hudson river after both engines failed within 208
seconds. All lives saved. This is a decision based on Gut feel or intuition. We call it Heuristics. 4. Top
Right. We neither know the risk nor the outcome. We do not know what to expect. Example 9/11
terror attack in New York.

Slide 17:Quiz 1. False 2. False 3. True 4.True

Slide 18:Decision Making is –

a. Art of balancing knowns and unknowns

b. Science of analysis and interpretation
c. Choice selection
d. Trigger for action
e. Impacts all stakeholders

Slide 19 : questions?

Slide 20: Thank You