Business decision making trends change from year to year depending on this new model or that person's success with a different idea. With globalization, time has become more precious, overwhelm more common. Business decision making trends towards faster decisions and automating decision processes are welcomed. Bosses want to be informed when a decision has not been made or a date or limit exceeded. There is even a term for it now, 'Management by Exception'.
But what about the over arching business decision making trends that are occurring as a result of human development.
A recent study has shown that more and more people are putting more importance on their family and children then on their career. The new motivating factor has shifted away from standing out from the crowd. It's about building relationships, both with yourself and with others. It has become about expressing yourself and your creativity and finding a way to fit into the greater system within which you operate.
People are no longer prepared to sell their souls to the corporation, they are only prepared to rent behaviors.
Corporations that thrived on top-down control, predictability and an accepting work force are realizing that this is no longer working. The world is changing at an ever-increasing rate. Markets collapse and reorganize. Competition is hotting up. Business decision making trends are coming and going more quickly. They are realizing that they need people who are creative, innovative, adaptable, and quick thinking.
But to allow people to work this way means giving them more control and freedom. It means allowing them to do their own decision making. It involves allowing them to do things their own way. It requires more communication, more information available to more people. All of these things imply more chaos. A scary prospect indeed for said organizations!
Business decision making trends that have lasted quite some time include the idea of cubes or cubicles. The idea is to create easier access and open spaces so that people communicate more easily and feel part of what's going on. In many places, however, it's still only a token gesture on the part of the organization.
People who are not at their desks, or who congregate at the water cooler, coffee pot and in hallways are still taken note of. They can't possibly be working, can they? They may or not be working, but they are building relationships.
The drive for more and more people nowadays is the desire to experience their own humanity. People want to experience their own lives, what it is to be human and to share the joy of living with their fellow human beings. People want to experience the spiritual in all things. There is an idea that if everyone and everything is treated as equal and important then things will be okay.
The business decision making trends of becoming 'green' and eco-friendly are aligning with this motivational driver. These drives also explains the 'save the planet' groups.
Organizations would do well to understand the driving forces of the people within it. They would do even better to implement this understanding. When, or if, the business decision making trends actually catch up with human development then there will be a significant change in how we organize ourselves on this planet.