KSA 2: Apply Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills to Organizational Decision Making

Making decisions in an organization requires critical thinking and problem solving

skills. This means being able to identify issues, the causes of those issues, and the
significance of their impact. Once you understand this you can make the correct
decision and positively affect the future of the organization which you are a part of.
Developing this KSA requires the ability to conduct internal and external analyses of
organizations, formulate strategies based on those analyses, and identify issues
with implementing the given strategies. It also requires that I develop unbiased
conclusions that result from my analyses in order to apply those conclusions to
decision making criteria. I developed this KSA while writing Rapid Growth of Small
Business: Its Causes and Significance.
Description of the Report
My goal in this report was to examine data on small business and entrepreneurship
in order to find any common trends, research some causes that could lead to this
trend, and develop predictions for the future in order to understand the significance
on this effect and how it would affect future decision making in small organizations.
I discovered that small businesses were growing due to many different factors
including higher demand for service from small businesses, increase in the
availability of technology, niche marketing, and the decline of the manufacturing
industry. In this report I also discuss the limitations, such as the fact that growth was
not universal, some small firms were actually hurt by these factors. However,
overall the industry saw growth due to these causes. This report was developed for
my Enterprise and small business course last academic year, and forced me to
improve my critical thinking and problem solving skills.
Development of KSA 2
This task challenged me to critically examine data, to find specific trends, and
critically think about those trends in enough detail to fully understand the
correlation, and the relationship they have to the business environment. I was able
to understand the many sources of the correlation that I observed, and present the
data in a way that could be helpful for future decision making and analyses. My
problem solving and critical thinking skills were greatly improved. This report also
allowed me to critically think about problems as they relate to organizational
decision making.
Future application
In the future I will be able to use the critical thinking skills I gained from developing
this report to accurately develop a decision matrix in order to solve problems for my
organization. As an employer you will be able to trust the decisions that I make
because you will be able to trust that I critically examined the problem to see its

causes and the effects each possible solution could have on the organization, not
only in the short term, but in the long run, no matter how big or small they may be.