What is Consequence

For leaders, decision making is a charge that cannot be escaped. For those who prefer to avoid this responsibility, the startling truth is that not making a decision is a decision. Executives, including those who lead community colleges, have critical accountability to build a support network with easy access to pertinent information that carries out decisions as intended. Decision making’s impending risks—particularly in this age of “I need it yesterday”—are amplified by the likelihood of misunderstanding and miscommunication. The man-hours of gathering, analyzing, and prioritizing information behind a good decision can be thwarted without a clear-cut strategy for how to make a decision with that information. This chapter provides insights as to why a United States community college organization’s leadership faltered as a result of decision making. For this domain, this long-neglected dynamic of identifying operational risks was explored using a tailored risk management methodology developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Community colleges, federal agencies, and small businesses have similar concerns about institutionalizing effective decision making; this chapter addresses those complexities specifically within community colleges and provides an understanding of managerial decision making at the executive level.