Monday, November 21, 2011

Leadership and Decision-Making

Leadership and Decision-Making

Leaders can only make fine decisions when they have knowledge and skills that are consistent with the level of complexity related with their job. Complexity can come from 1 of 3 sources: organizational complexity, leader complexity, and choice complexity.

When hiring leaders, organizations should look at the candidates' abilities and the complexity of the role. Thompson suggests that the function performed in an organization can be categorized into 1 of five levels of complexity:

Production level. The vast majority of workers (70 to 80 percent) perform at the production level of an organization. Their function is related with creating goods or services.

Tactical level. Personnel at this level organize and lead perform teams. The function is not complex. Tactical leaders use linear reasoning processes and can predict with high accuracy how solutions will work.

Organizational level. Complexity increases at the organizational level. Leaders are responsible for managing massive groups within the organization.

Strategic level. Strategic work is abstract in nature, while production, tactical and organizational function is concrete. The objective for leaders at the strategic level is to build objectives that will be executed more than extended periods of time, such as 36 to 60 months.

Visionary level. Function at this level is difficult and covers quite extended time spans. Leaders at the visionary level are responsible for achieving the organization's vision through the use of global resources.

A different very important consideration is leader complexity. This is defined as an individual's ability to manage the job requirements.

Leader complexity is determined by two factors: Learned skills, such as leadership abilities, technical expertise, perform experience, and understanding of the enterprise. Innate skills, such as cognitive ability, emotional intelligence, motivation, and personality. Cognitive capability is especially crucial for the reason that it affects how leaders strategy choice making. Leaders with high cognitive ability use several various dimensions to process information and facts.

They can deal with the high levels of ambiguity and inconsistency that regularly exist in complicated organizational environments. Emotional intelligence is also very important for leaders due to the fact it contributes to productive interpersonal interactions.

Profitable senior leaders just about consistently exhibit high levels of emotional intelligence. Selection complexity is generally related with nonroutine choices that have no regular solutions.

As leaders make decisions, they use either a rational strategy or an intuitive technique. Rational choice making is logical, sequential, and analytical.

The choice maker identifies several solutions and then selects the very best option. Rational choices are frequently much more complex and take longer than intuitive decisions which are made promptly and unconsciously.

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