Group Decision-Making Methods and Futuring

    

To study decision-making is learning to recognize and select options following one's own values and preferences. It is essential to analyze all available options when deciding so that you may pick the one most in line with your beliefs, priorities, and other personal criteria (Harris, 1998). To lessen the likelihood of dispute over the problem's description, requirements, goals, and criteria, decision-making should begin with the identification of the decision maker(s) and stakeholder(s) in the decision (Baker et al., 2001). Then, a generic decision-making workflow can be followed by (1) defining g the problem, (2) determining the requirements, (3) establishing goals, (4) identifying alternatives, (5) defining criteria, (6) selecting a decision-making tool, (7) evaluating alternatives against criteria, and finally (8) validating solutions against the problem statement (Fulop, 2006)

Discussion

Millett (2006) suggests that strategic decision-making can benefit from the complimentary nature of futuring and visioning. Defining the mission, setting the goals, building a vision, and making strategies that propel a business beyond the known of today and into the uncertainties of the future are all covered in detail. Millet (2006) advises senior leadership to understand the distinction between futuring and visioning and use them together. To ensure the continued success of your business, you must insist that your employees always consider how better to serve your clients and the needs of your goods. Establish a futuring team for external business environment trend monitoring and scanning, trend analysis, model development, and narrative production. Create a plan to get your staff involved in visioning activities, particularly when the matter at hand calls for them to think about the future of their operations. The outcomes of your future-gazing should serve as a benchmark for your present-day visioning. Create a plan for the company's future with input from many people and the aid of futuring and visioning techniques. Share the vision with both internal and external stakeholders regularly.

While the art and science of decision-making can follow a reasonably generic workflow as described above, more specialized methods are available, including the Delphi Method.

Delphi Method

The Delphi Method is often employed when making decisions as a group or doing some types of qualitative research. During the 1950s, RAND created the Delphi technique to foresee how new technologies would affect military operations. There have been several subsequent applications in fields as diverse as medicine, instruction, administration, and ecology. ExpertLens is only one example of a modern online application used by groups of experts or stakeholders to anonymously complete questions, receive feedback representing the "group response," debate, update their responses, and test for expert consensus. The method is assembling a group of experts, giving them a survey or questionnaire to fill out on their own time, and then having them share their responses in an anonymous form for discussion. It starts with presenting the questions to each expert—the inevitable convergence of all viewpoints into a common understanding (RAND, 2022).

The Delphi technique has been widely applied in forecasting, particularly in the business and technology sectors. The Delphi technique is also widely employed in public policy, as decision-makers consult with panels of experts on topics such as healthcare, education, and climate change (RAND, 2022).

Essential qualities, shortcomings, and facilitator expertise needed to implement the Delphi Method may all be assessed. A leader with excellent negotiation abilities is essential for facilitating a Delphi study and resolving any possible group disagreements. The leader should also be able to establish specific standards, such as consensus requirements. At the end of the session, the facilitator should push for an explanation for any outlying estimations. By design, the Delphi Method allows for iterative estimation, one of its main strengths. As an anonymous process, Delphi also enables honest feedback to surface.

Last but not least, this approach works well in tense circumstances. Conversely, Delphi has had a poor response rate and significant dropout rates in the past. Convergence to the group average is common in iterative processes and can be challenging to avoid. Planning and preparation time is rather long. (Mukherjee et al., 2018).

Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

One of the methods for making decisions based on several criteria, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), was created by Professor Thomas L. Saaty. It is a way to create relative measurement scales through pairwise comparisons. Data can be gathered by objective means like price, weight, and so forth or through more nebulous ones like satisfaction, preference, and the like. Since humans are not perfect, AHP allows for some room for judgmental inconsistency. The consistency index and the ratio scales originate from the principal Eigenvalue and principal Eigenvector, respectively (Mu & Pereyra-Rojas, 2016).

Focus Group Discussion

In order to learn more about a topic from the participants' deeply varied experiences, behaviors, beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes, researchers often use focus group discussions as a research tool. In order to keep a focus group's conversation light and open to audience participation, the facilitator must quickly establish rapport with participants, maintain objectivity, and keep the group's attention. Possessing strong interpersonal, linguistic, and aural abilities is also crucial. The facilitator must show that they can bend and change the dialogue. Because of their low cost and ease of organization, focus group talks are a beneficial research technique. On the other hand, focus groups might be complex since they take place in an unfamiliar setting for the participants (Mukherjee et al., 2018)

Conclusion

Strategic group decision-making is essential to developing and carrying out an organization's vision of the future. Several well-known group decision-making methods include Delphi, focus group discussions, and the analytic hierarchy process. This discussion outlines the resources needed and recommended procedures for a company to define its purpose, establish its priorities, create its vision, and chart its course into the future.

References

Baker, D., Bridges, D., Johnson, R., Krupa, J., Murphy, J., & Sorenson, K. (2001). Guidebook to Decision-Making Methods. U. S. Department of Energy. http://everyspec.com/DOE/DOE-PUBS/WSRC-IM-2002-00002_36284/

Fulop, J. (2006). Introduction to decision-making methods. Eco-Informatics and Decision Making (BDEI3) Workshop, (pp. 1-15). Washington, DC.  https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/43447287/decisionmakingmethods-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1662589381&Signature=Eur7WVBmAsXJgyggLHjez~Zlga4VTidYZfS1jHhQ4QfhTDWJjEwjfBDOlIPCgiHr0Iu-j8OXSfYxwxcXLqEqfcmvGOO1c7B4fZUYUxTZ7g1TTNYiYIp6A~-adbip89PXq~lbOC

Harris, R. (1998, July 2). Tools for the Age of Knowledge. Virtual Salt: http://www.virtualsalt.com/introduction-to-decision-making-part-1/

Millett, S. M. (2006). Futuring and visioning: Complementary approaches to strategic decision making. Strategy & Leadership, 34(3), 43-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878570610660591

Mu, E., & Pereyra-Rojas, M. (2016). Practical decision making: An Introduction to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) using Super Decisions V2. New York, NY: Springer.

Mukherjee, N., Zabala, A., Huge, J., Nyumba, T. O., Esmail, B. A., & Sutherland, W. J. (2018). Comparison of techniques for eliciting views and judgment in decision-making. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 9, 54-64. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12940

RAND. (2022). Delphi Method. RAND: https://www.rand.org/topics/delphi-method.html