1. Unit 4: Agribusiness Management Lesson: AM1
Business Decisions
Unit 4: Agribusiness Management
Lesson: AM1

2. Objectives Lesson Objective:
After completing the lesson on business decisions, students will demonstrate their ability to apply the concept in real-world situations by obtaining a minimum score of 80% on Let’s Buy a Car Evaluation.
Enabling Objectives:
Personally identify what drives the decision-making process, what interferes with the decision-making process, the consequences for making a poor decision, and the rewards for making an educated decision.
Define a problem and illustrate each step in the decision-making process in order to solve that problem.
Use the SWOT Analysis to evaluate a person and/or business decision.

3. Key Terms
SWOT

4. Making Decisions Read the assigned article
Complete AM1.1 using information from the article and personal conclusions drawn from the article.
What drives the decision-making process?
What interferes with the decision-making process?
What are the consequences of making a poor decision, whether it is personal, financial, business, or other?
What are the rewards for making an educated decision, whether it is a personal, financial, business, or other choice?

5. Personal Decision Making
What drives the decision-making process?
What interferes with the decision-making process?
What are the consequences of making a poor decision?
What are the rewards for making an educated decision?

6. Classroom Cash
Who would buy the right to sit wherever you want to sit in class?
Who would like to earn money in class to pay a teacher for an assignment instead of having to do the work yourself?
Who wants to earn money for good behavior?
Who wants to earn money just for showing up for class?
What if you lost money for missing an assignment?
What if you had to pay me for every minute you were tardy to class?

7. How does money change the stakes?

8. Why do we need to be able to make decisions?
In order for a business to run smoothly, decisions are constantly made and occur at all levels of the business or organization.
How those decisions are made is an important factor in the success of a decision.
The leader of an organization must decide whether to take full control of the decision-making process or to allow input from other employees when making decisions.

9. Decision-Making Process
1. Define the Problem
2. Identify Limiting Factors
3. Develop Potential Alternatives
4. Analyze Alternatives
5. Select the Best Alternative
6. Implement the Decision
7. Establish a Control and Evaluation System
Decision-Making Process

10. SWOT Analysis
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

11. Video http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm Your Task….
Using worksheet AM1.3 (in your packet), record questions that your should ask yourself through each section of SWOT. These are questions that would all you to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats regarding a decision.

13. Strengths What advantages does your organization have?
What do you do better than anyone else?
What unique or lowest-cost resources can you draw upon that others can't?
What do people in your market see as your strengths?
What factors mean that you "get the sale"?
What is your organization's Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?

14. Weaknesses What could you improve? What should you avoid?
What are people in your market likely to see as weaknesses?
What factors lose you sales?
Again, consider this from an internal and external basis:
Do other people seem to perceive weaknesses that you don't see?
Are your competitors doing any better than you?

15. Opportunities What good opportunities can you spot?
Of what interesting trends are you aware?
Useful opportunities can come from such things as:
Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and narrow scale
Changes in government policy related to your field
Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle, and so on
Local events

16. Threats What obstacles do you face? What are your competitors doing?
Are quality standards or specifications for your job, products, or services changing?
Is changing technology threatening your position?
Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems?
Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your business?

17. Conclusion
Making decisions is just another part of operating a business. Even with the best plans, decisions must be made and implemented to meet changing situations. If an owner or manager follows a logical decision-making process, however, changes may be more easily made.

18. Shout It Out! What drives the decision-making process?
What interferes with the decision-making process?
Consequences of poor decisions
Rewards of making educated decisions
Decision-Making Process
SWOT Analysis
SWOT Strengths
SWOT Weaknesses
SWOT Opportunities
SWOT Threats

19. Exit Card What did you learn today about decision making?
What questions do you still have about decision making?