Coles Supermarket - A Decision Making Company

The present company Coles Supermarket, in order to make effective and strong decision, it compromises on three main themes as - harnessing the power of groups; avoiding biases in decision making; dealing with risk and uncertainty. Contents INTRODUCTION 1 THEME 1 – HARNESSING THE POWER OF GROUPS 1 THEME 3 – AVOIDING BIAS IN DECISION MAKING 4 THEME 5 – DEALING WITH RISK AND UNCERTAINTY 6 INTRODUCTION Each and every business organisation, functioning as an active

REPORT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Decision-making is considered as the most important function of a company, upon which
success or failure of any project is based. Any errors or biasedness in making the decisions may
directly effect performance and productivity of business. The present company Coles
Supermarket, in order to make effective and strong decision, it compromises on three main
themes as - harnessing the power of groups; avoiding bias in decision making; dealing with risk
and uncertainty. All these procedures aid to make important decisions in favour of business
growth and success.

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
THEME 1 – HARNESSING THE POWER OF GROUPS.............................................................1
THEME 3 – AVOIDING BIAS IN DECISION MAKING............................................................4
THEME 5 – DEALING WITH RISK AND UNCERTAINTY......................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Each and every business organisation, functioning as an active part of corporate world,
needs to take some necessary decisions so that entity can run effectively (Dens, De Pelsmacker
and Verhellen, 2018). The present report is based upon Coles Supermarkets which is one of the
largest retail chains running within Australia and having its headquarters within Melbourne. It
deals in offerings pertaining to health and beauty, food & beverages, stationery, bakery,
household etc. It contains three themes where decision making has a primary role to play.
THEME 1 – HARNESSING THE POWER OF GROUPS
It is often seen that when a number of groups integrate to have an interaction and are
ready to accept the adoption of new ideas, a mutual pool of meaning is developed. Such pool can
be regarded as a measure of IQ of group. This implies that the magnitude of pool is directly
proportional to quality of decision making process. It means that if shared pool is big, decisions
are smart and vice-versa. This demonstrates the significance and power of groups within an
organisation. In this regard, Coles Supermarkets is a company where the management realises
the importance of groups. Thus, this entity makes use of a number of decision making techniques
that provide assistance in taking necessary decisions associated with group conduct and
performance (Kim, Faw and Michaelides, 2017). When the individuals working within the
respective organisation work together in teams, techniques to take effective decisions within
groups gain importance. At this time, personnel in Coles Supermarkets make use of such
approaches to avoid getting involved in conflicts. Such techniques used by the company are
briefly devised below:-
Delphi Method: Developed by RAND Corporation in the year 1950, this technique
utilises a number of questions which are designed as well as refined in different rounds. At times,
interviews are utilised. The experts in question respond to the questionnaires in an anonymous
manner after which they are confronted with the views and opinions of one another. Such
individuals are not acquainted with each other and have absolutely no knowledge of others
present within the expert panel. Here, feedback mechanisms are stipulated where the gathered
data is recorded as well as reported to participants on a regular basis. This is being done as a new
manner of data processing. This feedback includes future expectations as well as the
consideration and argument which underpin such expectation. With the help of confrontation, a
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consensus can be easily reached. This implies that Delphi decision making method enquires
experts regarding their set of suggestion or recommendation. The quantum of participant is not
adequate and relevant. Yet there needs to be a surety that various types of problem definition and
interest are properly taken into account, in order to make sure that all issues are seen from the
lens of a number of persons and widely discussed (Yazdi and Zarei, 2018). This ensures that all
the respondents give regard the contribution of every individual. Although this technique seems
to be easy to be used and applied within Coles Supermarkets, there are many individuals who are
dissatisfied as a result of this method. This is because of ignoring the disagreements and not
forming an artificial consensus.
Affinity Diagrams: Also known as KJ Diagram, these diagrams reflect the relation
between opinions, solutions, issues, and data by placing these among associated teams. This
allows the organisation of a wide variety of views and opinions so as to ensure its more optimum
analysis. This can be referred to as a graphical technique that is used by Coles Supermarkets with
an aim to plan and organise unconstructed ideas that emerge at the time of issue solving meeting
or brainstorming sessions (Liedtka, 2015). With the help of this group decision making
technique, huge amount of data is collected and then organised into groups on the basis of
natural relations. Here, in this decision-making approach, heterogeneous yet associated
ideologies are together integrated in meaningful classes, commonly regarded as affinity sets.
This method is used by personnel working in groups within Coles Supermarkets to bind a
number of concepts together under one theme and then clarifying the problems, thereby
providing a clear and systematic structure for search of solutions. While functioning within a
group, personnel of Coles consider affinity procedure as an effective way for facilitating
execution of work in a creative manner so as to optimally take into account complex problems.
This method can be taken into use in situations which are unclear, confusing or unknown. An
instance of this within Coles Supermarkets is when personnel belonging to diverse set of cultures
and experience come together to develop a group. Another example of this can be when
members of team possess inadequate or insufficient knowledge about area of evaluation and
analysis.
Appreciative Enquiry: This is a well known model taken into use for assessment,
decision making and evaluation. This is aimed at searching for best within personnel or
company. This is formulated within Coles Supermarkets when things within the team devised for
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a project are not going as per the planning. This is a relevant and significant approach for solving
the issues faced by people working in project team of Coles. This approach applied within this
famous and well recognised organisation of Australia is aimed at facilitating a sense of positive
team culture. A sense of positivity tends to drive a sense of optimism and increases the chances
of success. This technique is made up of two main terms, namely appreciate and explore. With
the help of this, new ideas and beliefs can be easily generated. There are 5 main elements of this
technique, namely, Define, Discover, Dream, Design and Deliver. With the help of these, an
effective strategy can be proposed to solve the issues that arise within the team, such as
ineffective communication or lack of certain skills.
Open Space Technology: This is a technique or methodology whereby meetings or
multi-day conferences are organised and run, and participants are duly given invitations so as to
emphasize upon significant purposes and/or tasks. This is universally regarded by business
organisations running within the global market place as a people-centred procedure where the
primary agenda is developed by attendance of audience. At the time of closure of every open
space technology meeting, creation of documentation is done which strives to summarise the
works of team. They are also referred to as 'self-organizing' owing to the fact that even if all the
participants are invited by the meeting sponsor and specifically charged with addressal of a pre-
selected theme, yet the agenda as well as organisation of ideas is done by them. An OST meeting
generally begins with shorter introduction given by the respective sponsor and the facilitator. The
former has the role of introducing the purpose while the facilitator is responsible for explanation
of "self-organizing" procedure (Rajesh, Ravi and Venkata Rao, 2015). All through this process,
facilitator is regarded as a person who is "totally present as well as fully invisible" and holds a
place for participants to carry out self-organisation instead of management of conversation. The
notes related with proceedings are documented at the end of meetings within Coles Supermarkets
and physical or electronic distribution of these to all participants takes place effectively. An
optimum document design is necessary for recommendations, ideas, views and improvements.
Recommendations
Below mentioned are some of the recommendations through which the effectiveness of
team to take decisions can be significantly enhanced:-
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Brainstorming: This is one of the most significant ways by which effectiveness of team
to take decisions can be improved as here input in terms of their views and opinions is called
from a number of people and then a final decision is arrived at.
Adequate group size: It is essential that the size of the group is relevant. It should not be
very small or very large. Also, it is seen that larger teams are prone to coordination and
cooperation issues (Hillson, 2017). Thus, when the group size is adequately set, it can facilitate a
better coordination and decision making with least emergence of conflicts or clashes.
Communication: This is the key to enhance effectiveness of group to take good and
strong decisions. Without a proper communication, decisions without the emergence of clashes
or conflicts cannot be taken. Thus, it is essential that constant conversation takes place among
the team to ensure that the group arrives at favourable and effective decisions.
Group Diversity: The diversity within the group should not be too much as this enhances
the probability of emergence of issues between the members owing to diverse beliefs and
opinions (Van Staveren, 2018). Thus, the group should contain adequate diversity in order to
ensure that coordination is set among the team and effective decisions are taken up for the
welfare and optimum performance of personnel.
THEME 3 – AVOIDING BIAS IN DECISION MAKING
In today’s modern and hyper competitive era, a large number of executives realise that
bias has the potential to distort business reasoning. In this regard, it has been believed that
confirmation bias results in ignorance of such evidences by people that contradict their
preconceived notion (Dens, De Pelsmacker and Verhellen, 2018). In this regard, anchoring is
believed to be causing people to put large emphasis on one piece of data. Besides this, loss
aversion tends to drive a sense of cautiousness among people. Although people and entities
across the globe are aware of the likely outcomes of biasness, still such awareness has not led to
reduction in biasness and it has even increased in the present era. The present conditions of bias
have even dampened the quality component of decisions associated with businesses.
The authors of the book “Before you make that big decision” have laid down certain
questions that are essential to be taken into account by decision makers before taking any
decision in regards to the activities or processes of business entity (Leijten and et. al., 2018). In
Coles, whenever a decision has to be taken in regard to appointing a project manager for
undertaking and executing a team activity, the 12 questions mentioned in the book are
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considered by the decision makers, i.e., the top authorities. Some of these questions along with
their application to the above mentioned situation are given below:-
1. Is there a reason to suspect the team making recommendations of errors motivated by
self-interest?
The decision that is undertaken by authorities is taken while ensuring that there is no self
interest involved (Legget and et. al., 2015). Further, the name of project manager is decided
while taking utmost care that there is no self reasons involved in this.
2. Have people making recommendations fallen in love with them?
The name of the project manager is decided by the top authorities of Coles only after
taking into account the cost, risks and laying emphasis upon the benefits of such decision.
3. Were there disagreeing views within suggesting team?
The name recommended by the top authorities is arrived at while taking into account the
views and opinions of all the team members. It is often seen that this gives rise to emergence of
conflicts within the team as some members propose one name while the rest suggest any other
name.
4. Could the diagnosis of scenario be overly impacted upon by salient analogies?
At times, the name of project manager is arrived at by looking at the past performance of
an individual (Latimer and et. al., 2016). This is so because a business person who has earlier
attained success in individual performance somewhere has a higher probability of making the
group succeed too. Thus, the name of project manager is often decided by taking into account
past events.
5. Have credible alternatives been taken into due consideration?
Deciding the project manager for a project is a complex task which is executed by top
executives of Coles Supermarkets only upon taking into account a number of alternative names
before arriving at the final decision (Kim, Faw and Michaelides, 2017). This is so because
project manager is responsible for managing and supervising the activities of team and thus
needs to be a qualified and skilled individual.
6. If you had to make this decision again in a year, what information would you want, and
can you get more of it now?
To decide the person who would take the position of project manager, information
regarding the past and present performance of all individuals is needed. Further, the feedback
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obtained upon each one of them from their seniors is also essential while deciding the person
eligible to hold the post of project manager within Coles.
THEME 5 – DEALING WITH RISK AND UNCERTAINTY
The extent of risk is determined with the help of quantum of uncertainty, the likely
profit/loss involved, the ways of making decisions and also the individual indulgence. These
elements when together taken into consideration helps in ascertaining the extent of risk involved
in a situation (Yazdi and Zarei, 2018). Further, the way in which these elements are perceived by
individuals is found to impact upon the magnitude to which it is believed that risk can be
controlled.
Coles Supermarkets is a large scale and well established organisation that carries out
regular assessment of risks in order to ensure that the sustainability of company is not hampered
(Althubaiti, 2016). In this regard, it makes use of two types of risk analysis approaches, namely,
qualitative and quantitative. Both of them are explained as follows:-
Qualitative Risk Analysis Quantitative Risk Analysis
It takes into consideration all sorts of risks
that are ascertained in “deternine risks”
process. It only considers the risks which we mark for
further analysis in the Perform Qualitative Risk
Analysis Process. These are the risks which have
a high impact on the project objectives.
It does not carry out analysis of risks in a
mathematical manner in order to recognize
the chances as well as likelihood. Rather
than that, this makes use of inputs of
stakeholders (expert’s judgments) for
judging the impacts.
This makes use of probability distributions in
order to effectively typify risk probability as
well as impacts. Also, this makes use of the
project model, simulation and mathematical
tools to ascertain probabilities as well as
impacts.
In this, assessment of individual risks is
executed by way of assignment of a
numeric ranking of probability as well as
impact; generally; the rank of 0 to 1 is
It carries out prediction of likely project
outcomes in the form of funds or time, based
upon integrated effects of risk. Also, it
approximates the possibility of accomplishing
goals and transmits contingency required for
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utilised whereby 1 means high. achievement of desirable extent of ease and
comfort.
Qualitative Risk Analysis process is applied
within Coles Supermarkets within almost
all important and essential projects.
This process is not taken into usage within
simple or moderately complex project. Also it is
not used in software project.
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