Planning and decision making are among the most valuable foundations on which businesses and organizations are built. For any organization to succeed in its undertaking, it needs to properly plan for virtually all aspects of its operations. The right decisions have to be made by its managers to see the business through successful operations.
Since the success of managers is reflected by the welfare of the organizations they manage, it is indubitable that planning and decision making cannot be separated from the practice of management. This paper is a thoughtful reflection of the usefulness of planning and decision making skills, acquired in class, in the practice of management.
As an aspiring manager, the ideas I acquired about planning and decision making in organizations will be very useful. This is because the topic was covered with clear explanations of the usefulness of planning and management in management and it also covered how one can plan well and make right and acceptable decisions.
Among the things that will be particularly useful in my life as a manager is the idea that planning and decision making is efficiently done using a bottom-up approach. This is because the use of a bottom-up approach in planning and making of decisions results in decisions that are characterized by sufficient consultation.
More importantly, the decisions made using a bottom-up approach are in most cases acceptable to both managers and junior employees (Smith 33). Other issues covered in the topic were equally useful and I am sure I will be applying most of the ideas I got in class, about this topic, in my life as a manager.
There are so many new things I learnt about planning and decision making. One of the new things that substantially impressed me is the fact that good managers are able to make decisions by just listening to their fellow employees (Smith 35).
That is, if someone comes with an idea of objection to a given plan, a good manager will listen to him/her and after evaluating the value of the suggestion, approve it or reject it. Since his/her evaluation is assumed to be based on shrewd judgment, the suggestion is, in this case, bound to have a positive effect on the organization. Much of the credit from such success goes to the manager for his/her coordination and leadership skills.
My realization of the fact that listening to other people’s ideas makes a good manager will be very useful in my life. This is primarily due to the fact that I like putting my ideas across so much that it sometimes interferes with my listening skills.
After the course, I am a better manager since I can now start working on my listening skills and try to have a positive perspective towards every idea that another person puts across. I now appreciate the fact that to be a good manager, I do not have to do all the thinking and planning work but I should have good evaluation skills for gauging the usefulness of ideas suggested by other people.
As it can be deduced from the discussion above, good managerial skills require good planning and decision making. Taking a course that tackles the same is very important since, as students are taught on how to be good planners and decision makers, they are given a chance to evaluate themselves. This is very useful since after evaluating themselves, students are able to perfect their weaknesses as far as planning and decision making is concerned and consequently be good managers.
Works Cited
Smith, Jane. Planning and Decision Making. New York. Wadsworth Publishing, 1996. Print.