To
Be or Not to Be
Recently, I had the chance to watch a law
enforcement official make a decision during a high-profile criminal
investigation. Strong arguments could have been made for one of two options.
Although this lead investigator clearly had the statutory authority to make the
call unilaterally, he hesitated to do so. Instead, he opted for consensus among
all of the agencies involved — in other words, a group decision.
His rationale was both high-minded and
cynical. On the one hand, he knew that the vigorous debate to forge an
agreement would mitigate blind spots and counter biases he might bring to the
table. On the other, he also knew his decision would minimize second-guessing
and back-channel griping to political officials or the media should things not
go as planned.
The anticipatory moves and the potential
outcomes that the lead investigator considered, both consciously and
subconsciously, highlight how gingerly successful decision making must be
approached. It also shows how easy it is to do poorly — especially now that the
nature of decision making in organizations is undergoing radical change.
In traditional corporate hierarchies,
decision making was seen as a scarce commodity, the province of a few managers
on the flowchart. When a choice had to be made between one option or another —
whether to add a larger taillight on a sedan, name a new supplier from
competing bids, offer a job to a sales rep candidate, or simply pick a caterer
for the company holiday party — a short list of scenarios was run up the chain
of command. At some point, the buck stopped and a decision was made by the
executive with the most authority in the immediate area of the company. The
front lines were places for execution of decisions handed down from above. It
was a measured and often slow process, centralized in corner offices.
Now, however, hierarchy is in retreat. Speed,
agility, and responsiveness determine market gains or failure. Decision-making
skill must be in ample supply and spread throughout the organization, including
on the factory floor, at the tiny R&D lab in another country, and in the
external sales office 6,000 miles away. Where once large parts of the
organization could deflect, defer, or delay their way out of making a tough
call, everyone at a company today needs to move fast, pivot smoothly, and then
adapt quickly to choices made. And for executives now, embedding a
decentralized, comprehensible, and coherent decision-making culture, one that
ensures consistently superior choices in rapidly evolving circumstances with
increasing transparency to a range of stakeholders, is a critical factor in
career and organizational success.
Decision-making skill must be in ample supply
and spread throughout the organization.
Here are three steps for a stellar
decision-making organization:
Articulate
the decision process.
There are many
ways to make a decision: You can make a unilateral
call. You can take input from multiple sources and then decide. You can take a
vote. You can work to consensus, as the lead investigator did. Each of these is
valid in the right circumstances. Clearly expressing which approach you prefer
achieves several objectives. It keeps you from falling into the rut of always
using the same process — and too often coming to the same conclusions. It helps
you educate and model good decision-making behavior for others. And it can
ensure that you build certainty and clarity through a logical and stable
decision-making strategy even when the outcome is not assured.
Create
values-based guideposts. Making decisions
always involves risk. While getting it right can garner praise, getting it
wrong could have serious consequences. It may attract the ire of your boss or a
customer. At the extreme, it can be a career-ender. If you expect people
throughout the organization, even at lower levels, to take this risk, you must
accept that not every decision will play out the way you would hope. Failure is
always an option and definitely a possibility. Simple
rules for decision making rooted in adding value to the organization foster a
willingness to make difficult choices confidently and provide a means for
decision-quality assessment.
A resource development company that I have
studied prioritizes its operations in this order: people, environment, and
business. People always come first and when they make decisions, they are only
judged by how carefully they have considered the impact on the environment and
the business. When the decision could be explained in terms of what was known
at the time and how potential value in these areas drove the choices, the
individuals making them were not only supported — they were celebrated.
Teach
decision making.
For all of the importance of
decentralized decision making in organizations today, few people are trained in
how to do it well. The “making good choices” skill seems to fall into the
“born, not made” bucket, though that need not be the case. Carl Spetzler, CEO of the Strategic Decisions Group, has studied this
issue intensively and in a new book, Decision
Quality: Value Creation from Better Business Decisions (Wiley, 2016), he and his coauthors lay out a
step-by-step method for achieving higher decision quality.
Spetzler’s
approach, which is essentially a series of exercises for evaluating choices,
could be a good starting point for taking the art and science of decision
making seriously. Accept that many inherent human foibles and limitations
inhibit our ability to assess risk, unearth creative options, and make the most
appropriate choices. Our natural outcome bias, for example, impedes our evaluation of previous
decisions — a critical learning opportunity. People build proficiency by
learning core skills, practicing, stumbling, learning from mistakes and
successes, and eventually by teaching others.
Because
employees today move from organization to organization more frequently than
before, it is not enough to assume that long periods of observation and
mentorship are sufficient to develop decision-making capacity in individuals.
For that reason, it is critical to treat decision making as a core skill worthy
of investment in training, just like Six
Sigma or any other approach that propels
strategic and operational excellence.
Analytics
have driven a revolution in data-driven
decision making. However, it is important to remember that
driving decisions and making them are two different things — for consequential
decisions across a broad spectrum, humans must make the final decisions. And
how that turns out should not be left to chance.
Eric J. McNulty
Eric
J. McNulty is the director of research at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative
and writes frequently about leadership and resilience.
http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/To-Be-or-Not-to-Be?gko=ba1f2
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