All entries for March 2013

L&E

Reading about theories of leadership I found that Confidence is a common aspect transversal for many approaches, as followers are suposed to trust and have strong confidence on ther leaders. Regarding this issue I found remarkable that for many authors confidence is something to be achieved inside leadership contexts, which is true given that confidence is gained trhought time, but it could be said that in practice confidence more than an end is a mean, is a way to improve leadership is just a form of managing and modeling leaders and situations. Confidence is escential and is an important part of the relationship between followers and leaders, I would suggest to use confidence as a way to become better leaders and as a mean to improve relatonships more than an final end for leaders.

Luisa Rodriguez Qui?Ones : 17 Mar 2013 16:53 |  Tags: Confidence |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

L&E

During the development of PMA I have found something interesting about values and attitudes. Some authors suggest that those are relevant defining different types of leaders and model the way they act. Anyway, there are some trends that argue this idea saying that values and attitudes are part of a person but circumstances define the way people act making different styles appear depending on the external conditions.

Regarding this opinions it is important to highlight that values are inherent to human beings, and from an ethical perspective those definitively influence the way we act. But what about external circumstances? I can say, that what distinguishes leaders is the fact of knowing how to manage situations, values will always be part of our personalities, but the job of leaders is to use the values in order to find solutions, to manage situations and to perform better with his team. External situations affect people, affect leaders but values are always going to be there as building blocks of behaviour.

Luisa Rodriguez Qui?Ones : 07 Mar 2013 13:03 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

RDM.

The financial component of an analysis for decision making can bring the organizations a good overview of the situations. Decision trees can help to seek which are going to be the costs or revenues when taking different types of decision, making the decision dependant on budget of economic interests. Anyway, finances are useful sometimes finances don't lead us the an accurate decision, given multiple factors such as, uncertainty, unexpected events, internal issues and secondary decisions that must be taken during the process, all this aspects conform a group of components that make decision takers think more deeply.

This fact is important, from my experience in RDM module, given that there are multiple factors that can affect a decision, and what I found most important is to asses them, to select and prioritize the relevant factors and analyse their impact on the final decision. On the other hand, what could be highlighted is to mix a good number of methodologies but before that! Choosing complementary methods is crucial. In this manner, if from the tree method we have found a certain risk, another methodology such as cost/benefit or risk analysis would help to overcome doubts.

Therefore, it could be said that there is never a right or wrong decision, the key factor is to know how to manage de decision process, to identify relevant factors and to face them in the appropriate way to take advantage of the environment and convert risk into opportunities.

Luisa Rodriguez Qui?Ones : 07 Mar 2013 12:55 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

RDM

Regarding heuristics in decision making processes, is an interesting topic. Based on the different types of heuristic styles it could be observed and said that it is inherent in natural human being. Heuristics could be linked to intuition, given its strong link to personal beliefs. What makes it more centred in human actions is the fact that experiences and activities are naturally located in our brains since we are born (OAS, 2005), and this builds our personal knowledge about something.

Although heuristics could involve a little bit of subjectivity based on personal experiences, “organizational memory" could be fed from past experiences and activity records. In this case, I think this information is crucial to have a base for decision making which could be related to representativeness and availability heuristics. Off course the decision making process should not be 100% based on heuristics, but, these elements could play an important role just to bring factors and information that could be used in the process.

It is important to consider that subjectivity can play an important role in this context. Therefore heuristics is a "natural" way to face something, but in a business context it is crucial to keep a prudential distance from emotions and this kind of subjective issues. A deep analysis is needed, and many decision making methodologies can be selected depending on the situation.

Luisa Rodriguez Qui?Ones : 05 Mar 2013 09:32 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem