Collaborative-Decision Making

            Stewart Levine gives a road map towards resolution in our text, in this book we talk about the craft of resolution and different ways that we can work towards making a decision that everyone will be satisfied with. One of the seven steps of resolution is called “listening for a vision of resolution”, in this step we are taught to listen so that everyone’s concerns may be heard. When we are getting stake holders involved we are now listening to everyone that is part of the team and working towards the best decision possible. When we are listening for a resolution that benefits everyone, one of the questions which we have to ask is if the “preliminary vision fits everyone’s view of the outcome” (Getting to Resolution pg. 137)? This is an important question to ask because as stated before we want to make everyone a part of the team. It is important to get the opinion of everyone who has a stake in the organization because they have a different point of view than you might have and diversity has been known to create good decisions.

            At my job I am constantly faced with many different situations, the job of a Rail Traffic Controller requires someone to move trains in the fastest way possible across America while still favoring priority trains. I have had situations in the past where I have needed to collaborate with many different people that had a stake in the mission. I was faced with a scenario where pushing a priority train would help us make this particular trains scheduled goal; the only down fall was that it would put into jeopardy making goal on about 8 non-priority trains. I gathered a team of individuals who all had a say in the matter and we began to discuss the issue at hand. Eventually we came to the conclusion that laying down the whole railroad for one train was not the most practical solution and decided we could make up some time on our priority train later on. This was an important decision because we saved the company some money and we increased all of the stakeholder’s bonuses in this instance. As a team we made a decision and stuck to it, we took a risk but it was a risk that we all agreed upon which made our resolution much better in the long run. Since we all came to the decision together there was no bad blood between our groups.

            There were many ways that including the stakeholders helped us out in this situation. As I think about it I realized that

-          We were not worried about any repercussions because everyone was on board with the decision.

-          We had the investors on our side and happy to comply with the situation.

 

-          We were given more leeway because all of the stakeholders knew what we were trying to accomplish at the moment.

 

-          We were much more efficient because we had a workable agreement, a shared vision and minimized conflict.

 

-          We were able to be much more creative with our options now that we had the blessings of the stake holders.

In the long run, throughout this whole ordeal I knew that our team work and collaboration helped us achieve our objective. When we brought in everyone that would be involved we all felt a weight come off of our shoulders, we no longer felt the pressure of making the decision on our own and having to face the repercussions later on. We were able to focus and make the best decision possible. The only other person I feel that could have added to the strength of our team was our liaison between the company who’s product we were shipping and our company, unfortunately he was not available on this day. Being able to keep everyone informed is a key part of the resolution process.

This resolution process has shed light on many ways that I have done business in the past. It has taught me many things I like to think that I will use it in the future when working towards a resolution; I will make it a point to have a positive attitude, listen to everyone and also include all members. Sometimes taking on all the decisions yourself can be very stressful and hurt everyone in the long run.  

 

  Reference:

Levine, S. (2009). Getting to resolution: Turning conflict into collaboration (2^nd Ed.).San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.