What is a Nonroutine Decision?

A nonroutine decision is a choice made to deal with a non-repetitive, tactical situation. These decisions typically involve situations that fall outside of the normal operating procedures of a business. When such a situation arises, the operating procedures mandate that the decision be bumped out of the normal operating flow and sent to a manager for resolution.

Dealing with Nonroutine Decisions

There are several best practices associated with nonroutine decisions, which are as follows:

Monitor by type and construct procedures as needed. When a business has a comprehensive suite of standard operating procedures, there should be relatively few nonroutine decisions, since most decisions have been accounted for by the procedures. In a well-run business, management might track how many of these situations arise and devise procedures for the most common of them, so that lower-level staff can deal with them in a routine manner.
Assign responsibility. Some nonroutine decisions cannot be standardized. Instead, someone must make a decision regarding which tactical alternative to take. For example, a manager must decide whether to stop selling a product, or whether to make a product in-house or have it produced by a third party. Who should take responsibility can be set up in a standardized format, even if there is no associated procedure for how to deal with these decisions.
Identify analyses to be conducted. Even if there is no procedure for dealing with a nonroutine decision, you can identify the types of analyses for various clusters of decisions. Identifying these tasks in advance assists with the decision-making process. These decisions typically involve some analysis of the costs and margins involved, as well as future projections.

Examples of Nonroutine Decisions

Examples of nonroutine decisions that might require managerial attention are as follows:

Whether to offer credit to a customer whose financial situation is weak
Whether to alter the production schedule to deal with a rush customer order
Whether to accept a customer order for a non-standard product that requires special processing