Group Decision-Making

Decision making takes considerable time and effort. The problem I see with making group decisions is the time you take to evaluate each option. The more people you have in a group, the more opinions are shared and it becomes difficult to reach a consensus. It is key to define what the problem is and who will be affected by the decision. Decisions that will be affecting a group will need to be addressed with the group or at least a fair representation of the group.

For example, I work at a high school and we host an annual dance to raise funds for scholarships. Tickets for the dance are sold at $5, food, music and door prizes are donated by sponsors, teachers, and staff. The problem, lack of participation from the students. Teachers
As an added benefit, teachers, students, and staff worked together this strengthened the teacher and student relationship on campus. The school adopted this system and it is currently being used for different events with great success. The key was to involve the group being affected by the decisions and have a smaller committee take on the final decision.

One other element that the book mentions is decision criteria. Although we did not use this process it, after reading about it I realize how beneficial it is. For example, establishing a criterion for the songs selection can make the process more efficient. Instead of going trough a long list of songs suggested by students we could have given them criterion like songs need to be school appropriate and playlist need to have a variety of genres of music. This will narrow the list that teachers and staff have to review.

Although group decision making can be time-consuming we found that using technology made it quick and simple for students to vote and select a final theme. We also found that we had great feedback and alternative solutions from this