B. Translate the paragraph in cursive.

C. Summarize the text in 100-150 words.

d. Role play an interview about decision-making process in the restaurant industry. Work in pairs and ask each other the following questions:

1. What is your business?
2. Has your business been successful? Why?
3. What isn’t working in your business?
4. What your ideas were hard to execute?
5. Are you making your business more complicated? Why?
6. Are your innovations easy for your clients to understand? Why?
7. Are you setting the trends? Give examples.
8. What are the needs of your clients?
9. How do you differentiate yourself from other brands?
10. How can you appeal to your guests?
11. What business activities are priorities for you?
12. Where is the fence line of risk for you?
13. What are your business objectives?
14. Are you trying to be all things to everyone? Why?

 

E. Fill in the gaps with prepositions consulting the text and make your own sentences with the phrases.

1. to propel a brand __ an enduring one
2. to ride __ the recession
3. to plot the course __ future success
4. to differentiate you __ other brands

 

f. Paraphrase with synonyms:

1. strategic	2. initiative
3. ultimately	4. core
5. guidepost	6. to prioritize

G. Match words to make collocations consulting the text. Make you own sentences with the phrases.

1. To have	the needs
2. To implement	the trend
3. To set	changes
4. To meet	a vision

Speaking

 

Form 3 teams and complete the mind map MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING: TYPES AND STYLES. The mind map is divided into 3 parts A, B, C. Each team is responsible for a particular part, in the end all parts should be placed together in the order chosen by teams, presented and discussed.

Each group should discuss the topics below by defining, explaining and giving examples.

 

MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING: TYPES AND STYLES

Team A:

1) Decision-making process: linear thinking and systems thinking;

2) Programmed decisions and non-programmed decisions;

3) Management style: problem avoider.

Team B:

1) Levels of decision-making in an organization: strategic decision-making, tactical decision-making, operational decision-making;

2) Decision-making under different conditions: conditions of certainty, conditions of risk, conditions of uncertainty;

3) Management style: problem solver.

Team C:

1) Steps in the decision-making process: situational analysis, setting performance standards, generation of alternatives, consequences evaluation, pilot-testing and full implementation;

2) Management style: problem seeker.

Reading 2

a. Read the text to answer the following questions:

1. Why is decision making sometimes dysfunctional?

2. Why innovative decisions are made mostly by teams, not individuals?

3. Do you think decision making should be innovative nowadays? Why?

4. What does it take to make an innovative decision?

5. What informal information can be lost during decision-making process?

6. How can this lost informal information influence the decision-making process?

Collaborative Business Intelligence: Socializing Team-Based Decision Making ^[4]

 

For many of us, making decisions is a challenge; for others, it can be torture. Despite nearly half a century of work in decision support and business intelligence, many businesses' decisions look vaguely dysfunctional.

If we examine how most organizations really make important and innovative decisions, we see that most are made by teams (permanent or transitory) of people rather than by individuals. It's high time we designed an effective approach to true decision-making support-what we might call innovative team-based decision making.

In the mid-1990s, Gartner analyst Howard Dresner popularized the term business intelligence (BI), words that suggest deep thought and extensive, rational decision making. However, what we get from vendors and IT is closer to what we used to call a decision support system (DSS). Dan Power (2007) identifies five classes of DSS, within which BI fits mainly as a data-driven and, to a lesser extent, model-driven DSS. The actual focus of BI tools is on the collection, analysis, and presentation of largely numerical, mostly internal information to individual decision makers. The assumption is that having provided enough "good" information, IT can stand back and watch the business make "better" decisions.

This is only occasionally true. In recent years, much of the focus has turned to operational BI and big data - making ever-faster, smaller decisions based on ever-larger data sets. Yes, the world of business is spinning ever faster and daily decision making has to keep pace, but the type of change we're experiencing now is revolutionary. The social and economic fabric of our world is being torn apart and remade in constant and repeated seismic events. Sovereign debt ratings of formerly unassailable AAA countries are being downgraded. Previously blue-chip businesses in every industry have fallen as new kids on the block charm Wall Street.

Decision making needs to be fast and it absolutely must be innovative - in a different league from what we've done before. Such decision making is a team effort, especially for decisions that require or produce innovation. The truth is that such innovative decision making has little to do with the explicit, largely numeric data we've focused on for over 20 years.

Those of us who have worked in large enterprises have seen sufficient evidence to conclude that many decisions have a rather shaky relationship with facts and business intelligence, and limited relevance even to stated business goals. How many successful decisions have been declared as based on "gut feel" and unsuccessful ones blamed on "lack of reliable information"? How often have we seen political expedience override a strongly argued rationale? Then there's the directive to "just take one more look at the figures" when the numbers contradict the group wisdom of the boardroom.

What are we missing? Our longtime focus on BI is blinding us to the fact that the most effective and productive path from information to innovation is through interaction. A few ideas do pop into our heads out of nowhere, but most of our best ideas - useful, productive ideas that can be implemented - are born from interaction with peers, colleagues, and even managers.

The human mind is ultimately a social construct, which leads us directly to social networking and Web 2.0, which represents the evolving democratization of the Internet. Creativity has been open sourced. Centralized control has given way to geographically separated cooperation. Social media (such as Twitter and Facebook) allow people to openly share their observations and opinions and expose themselves to feedback. The Web has sparked our innovation, helped us cooperate, and put the focus on teams.

Besides the people on the team, we note that in order to function, the team needs (1) information artifacts that are used, shared, and created by the members and (2) a web of interactions between the members. It's the way it works today, and it's also the way it doesn't quite work - we lose so much of importance that goes on within the work of the team, such as:

· Context. The business environment and background to the decision, the team members involved, and initiating and closing actions.

· Interactions. All informal communication among team members and with external parties, including meetings (face-to-face and electronic), telephone calls, instant messages, tweets, and even e-mail, if not stored centrally.

· History. The performance of team members, the unfolding of thought processes leading to options considered and discarded, the timing of events and when information was requested/received, and a formal record of how innovation occurred.

· Consequences. Closing the loop between expectations set in the decision and what actually happened in the real world.

A typical example is a team brought together to investigate and plan the CEO's vision of a new process. Its members come from across the business and from IT, bringing their skills and knowledge of process and information needs, approaches, and tools. After the CEO briefs the team, members begin to gather documentation on their PCs or even in a content store or team room tool. As the project progresses, the team interacts with one another, using and creating further information.

When a new team member comes on board, the only information about what has occurred so far is what exists in the team's formal documents. Knowledge about previously discarded options exists only in the heads of the original team members, and the new team member wastes time and energy exploring invalid options. Eventually, the team concludes on a new strategy and plan for the process, and presents it to the CEO, who is only partially satisfied. Some information had been lost - the only record of the CEO's briefing is in the participants' handwritten notes, which are inconsistent and incomplete. The team returns to work suitably chastened.

The lost information and undocumented work points clearly to a need for some mechanism to formalize the team's process and progress.

b. Explain the following concepts in English and translate them:

1. business intelligence (BI)	2. blue-chip business
3. decision support	4. Web 2.0
5. AAA countries	6. rationale

 

c. Find phrases in the text that mean the same:

1. The most important part of a period

2. To move as fast as someone else

3. To be much better than someone else

4. Historically important objects

 

d. Match words to make collocations consulting the text:

1. team	feel
2. daily	data
3. numeric	option
4. sufficient	networking
5. reliable	evidence
6. gut	effort
7. social	information
8. invalid	decision