Reference no: EM133334163

CASE STUDY Horward Schutz is the CEO of Starbucks. Read his message to his employees.

"Message from Howard: Investing in the U.S. Starbucks Partner Experience" (7/11/2016)

Questions: Connect his message to any of these key takeaways

1. A supervisor's or manager's decision should be a conscious choice among alternative courses of action directed toward a specific purpose.
2. Different people approach decision making in different ways. Examples include logical, intuitive, indecisive, and impulsive approaches.
3. The decisions that a hospitality supervisor is called on to make range from those that are easy to make to complicated time-pressure decisions to problem solving.
4. It is essential to recognize which decisions are important and which are unimportant, which decisions you must make now and which can wait.
5. The following six steps are a simple version of the logical approach to decision making: Define the problem and set objectives; get the facts (who-what-when-where-how-why); develop and rank alternative solutions; decide on the best solution by examining risk, economy, feasibility, acceptability, and objectives; convert the decision into action; and follow up.
6. When making decisions, your timing can be very important.
7. Problem solving is a special kind of decision making that involves more than a choice between courses of action. It involves identifying the cause of a problem and developing ways to correct or remove the cause.
8. The chief difference between problem solving and simple decision making is that there are extra steps that you must take before you can begin to generate alternative courses of action. The pattern goes like this: describe the problem, search out the cause, define the real problem and set objectives, develop alternative solutions, decide on the best solution, implement the decision, and follow up.
9. Group decision making is advantageous because you get more information relevant to the decision as well as more ideas. 11.1 People thinking together can arrive at better decisions, and people who have participated in making the decision are generally committed to carrying it out. Critics of group decision making say that the process takes too much time and tends to be dominated by one person (usually, the boss). If consensus is required, critics say that it leads to mediocre decisions that will appease everyone rather than the best decision.
10. Group decision making is not a panacea. It works best when members are accustomed to working together as a team and have differing expertise and points of view but common goals, when the leader is skillful at keeping meetings on target without dominating or manipulating, and when the group is rewarded for making good decisions.
11. The degree of participation in problem solving and decision making may also vary.
12. For dealing with problems involving one person, an interesting participative approach, win/win problem solving, means that you find a solution that satisfies both of you. You include the worker from the beginning of the problem-solving process, from defining the problem through to carrying out the agreement.
13. Some important decision-making skills include make sure the decision is yours to make, face decisions promptly, sort out the important decisions from the inconsequential ones, calculate the risks, think about timing, be alert to signs of problems, keep an open mind when investigating a problem, consult your supervisor when necessary, make sure that you are not part of the problem, learn from your decisions, and follow up on your decisions.
14. Controlling is a process by which supervisors measure, evaluate, and compare results to goals and standards previously agreed upon, and take corrective action when necessary to stay on course. Figure 13.4 gives examples of controls commonly found in the hospitality industry.