During my academic journey I have encountered multiple key decision-making moments, these decision problems had to be solved which involved multiple steps. In this assignment, I will be reflecting on only two key decisions that I have personally experienced. My first problem ultimately caused my second key problem to occur which meant that I had to use multiple process goals and efficient techniques in order to dismantle the problems, all of which will be described and analysed in this assignment.
A key decision that I had only recently identified was a problem took place approximately a year ago. The decision was to either pursuing a bachelor’s degree at university or an apprenticeship after I had completed my A-levels. This problem was inevitable as it is the next big step of my life, it came naturally. As soon as I identified the problem, I then began to attempt to solve this problem. My process of solving the key problem was strongly influenced by Jeff Bezos’ problem-solving method which he explained in his recent interview with the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. Bezos takes 3 steps in solving problems such as wrong orders from his company, Amazon, the three steps are as follows: First is to put it in writing, secondly its identifying the root causes and finally its to identify root solutions. Applying this method to my problem I created a table of pros and cons of either doing a degree or an apprenticeship, after I had completed this I was able to easily evaluate the problem, this was very beneficial for me. I then began to identify the root cause, Bezos explains this process as “greatly magnifying the potential of completely eliminating the problem…” So, I tried to identify which decision would cause the least amount of problems, I came to the conclusion that perusing an apprenticeship instead of a degree will cause fewer financial problems. Using the third step, identifying root solutions, I attempted to find a solution to the financial problem that may occur if I choose to do a degree, I concluded that taking on a part-time job while studying my degree will be a root solution to my root cause.
Judgement can be defined in many ways, Bazerman & Moore (2009) define judgment as a term that “refers to the cognitive aspects of the decision-making process.” With my problem, I have to think with accurate judgement and in order to do this my system 1 and system 2 thinking had to work together, however my system 1 thinking, which is my brain’s automatic emotional processing, can sometimes lead to cognitive biases. These biases are errors or hiccups in our judgement which may cause us to favour one decision over the other. Applying this to my problem, when judging whether I should do a degree or an apprenticeship, I would do a lot of online research and due to the fact at universities have a bigger advertising budget there will be much more information and advertising on universities and the degrees they provide. Comparing this to apprenticeships, which do not have much information to be researched, this caused my system 1 to make a quick, effortless and emotional decision that diverted my decision to bias the degree, this is called ‘the availability heuristic’ which states that there may be a bias when we assess the frequency of an event (in this case being information on degrees) and the more available the events are the easier they are to recall which may cause inaccurate judgement. The inaccurate judgement can be seen as although degrees may advertise their high employment rates after graduation which may cause a cognitive bias, in reality apprenticeships have a higher employment rate at over 90%, as seen on the government website. My bias is that of the cognitive nature as it is a psychological error which led to an inaccurate judgment.
Bazerman & Moore (2009) define debiasing as the “procedure for reducing or eliminating biases from the cognitive strategies of the decision maker.” This means that debiasing is a method of removing biases which can create a more accurate judgment in order to problem-solve more efficiently. To begin the debiasing process, I had to first become aware of the bias that had been triggered. I first became aware that a bias had occurred when I did further research on the facts and figures of apprenticeships and it became apparent to me that apprenticeships may be the better option all though I had biased my decision towards a degree. Once I had identified the bias, I then chose to begin the debiasing process which involved picking an appropriate debiasing technique and applying it. The debiasing technique that I had chosen was the ‘awareness of cognitive biases’ technique. This technique involves simply education yourself or naturally being aware of basic biases that may occur. In my situation, over advertising is a very common biasing strategy used by businesses, such as universities, to increase consumer demand. If I develop the knowledge of over-advertising then I have now de-biased the cognitive bias in my situation as I now know that all thought there may be a lot of information and exposure about universities and degrees, this may just be a business strategy and may not be the best option.
I had to decide what was the outcome, do I study a degree or do an apprenticeship? When putting the problem into writing, studying a degree would be the more desirable option as the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages. However, there may have been a cognitive bias which may have misguided me to favour a degree, so after de-biasing the best option would be an apprenticeship. In conclusion, the decision outcome was to do a degree after A-Levels. Although I chose to do a degree, a useful lesson I learnt was that biases have a big impact on problem-solving and that I should always use an appropriate and efficient de-biasing technique in order to come to the correct decision outcome.
After I had decided to pursue a degree another decision-making problem had arisen, it was the decision of which degree to pursue. Should I follow my childhood dream of becoming a doctor and do medical related degree? Or do I follow in the footsteps of my family and become an accountant and do an accounting related degree? This decision would be the biggest I had faced during my academic journey and I knew I had to use a very efficient process goal in order to identify and solve this problem.
I decided to tackle this problem with the guidelines of managerial decision-making techniques. Managerial decision-making takes six steps of solving a decision problem. The first step is to ‘define the problem’, managers need to understand the problem, I applied this to my problem and I then began to understand my problem clearly. The second step is to ‘identify the criteria’ which is described as identifying the objectives that I want to accomplish with the decision, with my problem I want to accomplish the maximum amount of happiness and enjoyment provided by the degree while it will improve my future prospects. The third step is to ‘generate alternatives’, this step is described as ‘identifying alternative courses of action,’ my original decision was to do a medical degree however I identified the alternative course of action which was an accounting degree through motivation by family members. The fifth step is to ‘rate each alternative on each criterion,’ this step is described as the most difficult. The alternative, an accounting degree, does not weigh positively on the criteria as it does not provide the most happiness and enjoyment, however it does improve my future prospects. The sixth and final step is to ‘compute the optimal decision’ which I did by weighing each of the ratings. I came to the conclusion that they were both equally weighed, and I still had not came to a decision.
A judgment bias had also occurred during this decision problem. Although during both my problems a bias had occurred, this particular bias was of the motivational and emotional nature. Motivation and emotion had an influence on my decision because I was having an internal confusion of what I wanted to do and what I think I want to do. I want to do an accounting degree because of the improved future prospects and the praise I will get from my family when I should be doing the medical degree because it is my dream to become a doctor. This confusion prevented my memory from accessing past emotions that involved wanting to become a doctor, such as how it made me feel when I would think about being a doctor in the future. This prevention of emotional memory made me underestimate the level of happiness I would achieve if I studied a medical degree rather than an accounting degree, therefore leading to a bias of studying an accounting degree.
I believed that used the ‘change’ debiasing technique (Bazerman & Moore, 2009) seemed to be the most appropriate method of debiasing. The technique