Critical thinking and Decision Making essay

Critical thinking and Decision Making essayCritical thinking is the process of using the available facts and using them to infer what should be done in a certain situation. For example: relating to the IT field, I know that something is not working correctly but I don’t know why. First, I need to determine what the last repair was that was made to the machine in question. In order to properly repair the machine, I need to know: did another customer engineer add new drivers, did someone delete a file, has a driver become corrupt somehow; all of these questions need to be answered to obtain a proper view of what the problem is.Decision making is the process where thoughts are turned into actions. Again, I use the IT field as my reference. In using the PC analogy, once you have thought through what the problem could be you must decide what must be done.In order to be successful, decisions and critical thinking should be intertwined. When using critical thinking you must decide what the most relevant information is and what can be ignored. You must decide what the end result should be. The inherent marriage of decision making and critical thinking is almost impossible to divorce one from the other. This is not to say that it can’t be done, but the end result is usually one that ends in disaster rather than success. When a decision is not critically thought out, mistakes are inevitable. For example: You make a decision to purchase a TV larger than the current one you own because it would look better in your living room. You make the purchase but find when you get it out to your VW Bug; you don’t have the room to put the 50-inch box. Had true critical thinking played a role in this decision, two things would have happened: One, you would have purchased a smaller TV that would fit neatly into your compact sports car or two, pay a delivery charge to completely bypass the issue.The above illustration backs up the idea that critical thinking can greatly improve and simplify your life. First and foremost, it allows you to filter out the irrelevant information and aide in process of getting to the heart of the issue. Second, decisions can be made with a greater amount of accuracy. Using critical thinking can ease complicated scheduling issues. It enables you to prioritize your activities for the day and to ensure that any new undertakings are realistically sequenced and slotted into your schedule.I personally am required to use critical thinking every single day in my employment. Working for a nationally known company, not only do I have a reputation to uphold, I have a client base that must be kept satisfied with my level of provided service. These clients have a significant financial impact on the earnings for my company. Using critical thinking is a must do in order to maintain my position with NCR. In any given day, I am inundated with service calls. One day, for example, I may have a majority of my calls in a local driving area and one call that is several hours drive away. I must assess the level of service we are contracted to provide the clients and work out a way to take care of the hot issues. If the in town calls are just vicinity or preventative maintenance calls, I automatically ascertain that the out of town call needs to be taken care of first to ensure customer delight and corporate wide satisfaction. If this decision is made incorrectly, clients can impose fines, demand refunds, and ultimately, not renew their contract. Critical thinking allows me to maintain satisfied clients and ensure my company is gaining clients and revenue.I also use critical thinking while trouble shooting issues at a client site. I am given very limited information when assigned a call in my work queue. From the little information supplied to me, I need to find out who originally placed the call and collect the detailed information from them. Typically, the answers I do receive are just as vague as the information initially given at the time of assignment. At this point, I must first find the offending unit, assess the symptoms try and dissect and diagnose what the root cause of the failure is. The trick is to do this without replacing parts at random until the unit is once again repaired and working. By utilizing my own critical thinking skills, I am able to save myself time and frustration and the company and client money.Decision making and critical thinking are not only found in the workplace, but in my personal life as well. Utilizing these two processes in conjunction with other processes like follow through are definite ways to set ones self up for success in most endeavors undertaking.