Individual
Assignment 1
The first concept that I learned
during this first reading assignment was in Chapter 1 of Hard Facts. The concept is the poor decision practices
that the book defined as casual benchmarking, doing what worked in the past,
and following deeply held ideologies.
This concept highlights these three mistakes that companies often
make. Benchmarking has to do with doing
what works for other companies. People
also seem to follow what may have worked for them in the past with present
issues. Certain ideologies that people
hold to be true may be used by them to run an organization. An example of benchmarking given by the book
is other airlines trying to imitate what Southwest does to achieve their
success. In different situations and
cultures however, what works for Southwest may not work for other airlines. I
think this is an important concept for any position of decision making to be
aware of. These three practices are ways
that managers may handle a problem. I
think to be aware of these practices, managers can try to avoid following them
to make their business decisions. I
would have never thought that these could be problems for management, but after
reading this section I can see how they could hurt an organization rather than
help it. Therefore I think it is an
important concept that many people may not think about.
In the article “Best practices: How
to evaluate psychological science for use by organizations” they discuss how
common sense is not that first chose that should be used in business decision
making. Common sense is using your own
instincts in decisions and it can be convenient and inexpensive. The article states that it should be used
only in the absent of scientific evidence.
I think this concept is important because it is probably used more often
than scientific evidence in the business environment. The usefulness of this article is to help
people focus more on evidence first than always going with their instinct. This is another concept I find interesting
because common sense is probably always used over scientific evidence and this
article sheds light on why that should not be the case. I don’t think that using common sense will
always fail and it may be the right decision in some cases, but I think that
people perhaps will overlook the evidence more often than not and go with their
common sense.
Schiff
Estess, P. (1999, June 1). Getting Management Help From the Next Generation. In
Entrepreneur. Retrieved June 29, 2014, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/17828
The examples in this article are
based on individual cases and experiences.
In one of the examples common sense is used as a good decision making
tool. The article states that no actual
knowledge of the business was involved in the decision made. However, this common sense decision had a
positive outcome for the company.
Another example in this article related to what I read in the first two
chapters of our book was about past decisions being past decisions. The example found that what may not have
worked in the past before did not stop the new management team from trying it
again. The article seems to contradict
much of the first two chapters of the book.
I believe the examples in the articles were isolated cases and perhaps
were not decisions made through research and evidence.
I found this week’s readings to be
very informative. Much of the
information may not be the way I would have thought about things before. I would not have thought about how one thing
may work for one company may be a failure for another company. It opened my eyes to really think more about
the facts than what I think or feel about a situation.
