A632.1.4RB_SeabournBeau

Critically think about your own decision-making process and reflect on the process you use compared to the process outlined in the article.  Would this improve your decision-making?  What would the impact be on forward planning?  How would you apply optimal dynamic decision analysis to predict future impact of today's decision?

For this week, I wanted to share a recent decision making process and experience I had/used. A few months ago, my wife and I decided that we needed to get a larger car for our growing family. My wife left all of the decision making to me to figure out and so I used what I knew then to better determine what car we should buy and how much we should spend. Based on the reading this week, I now understand that I basically used forward planning to determine the need for our new car along with how that new car might serve our best future needs. I took into consideration the car we had, we had just bought it brand new Jeep a year earlier. I was using my past experiences to form a decision now. The reading this week made mention that when we are making decisions, we sometimes will measure the good verse the bad and that we keep for decisions based on past experiences and emotions. In this case, I was doing that. I knew that I needed something reliable, affordable, and something bigger then what we had. I knew what we didn't need, I just needed to figure out what we NEEDED.

The reading this week said "we are inherently prone to give more weight to that which is more concrete and vivid at the expense of that which is more intangible and ambiguous" (Hock, 2011). I think this is the way I make decisions, in most cases. I like to know the details and information before I make a choice. The reading also mentioned that people tend to look ahead only one step at a time and that we have a hard time seeing well in advance of a situation. Sometimes, I get blond sided that way also. I lack the ability to see a few steps ahead. In my car buying example, I was actually trying to use this method of looking into future scenario which actually turned out well for us and the car we selected.

Lastly, forward planning is something that I have to learn to be better at. What I've learned in other classes is that I sometimes let my emotions and feelings get to much in the way of making informed decisions. The reading made me think of something. The reading talked about how our past knowledge and bias may prevent us from making the best decisions because those experiences could have been not good. What I think I need to work on is weeding out my bias and past emotional experiences in order to make the best choice for the present situation. I will however try and use the good past experiences to lead me into making a decision in the future. Success is something that forms influences and that could be something we find ourselves in later. There is a lot to be learned from this week. Understanding different impacts and outside influences have on you is something that will allow me and others to  make choices and decisions more rationally serving the best needs of ourselves or our companies.

Hock, S. (2001). Wharton on Making Decisions. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.