Tag Archives: decision making

04-Managing a project team, 05-Creating & constructing good solutions, problem statement, team dynamics

A post about the birds and the bees: The Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives

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Think back to the first time you had to make a decision in a corporate setting. Take a moment and ask yourself some question:

– What was the problem at hand?
– Did you have all of the information that you needed to accurately make a decision?
– Did you have enough time to think over all of the potential outcomes?
– Or conversely, did you have so much time, that you started to second guess yourself?

Now, I will ask a different question. Think about the first bad decision that you made; a decision that had an outcome that was not what you were hoping for. Ask yourself the same questions. Then ask yourself, what would have been different, had you sought help from those around you, and made a decision as a group, rather than as an individual?

I personally find the group mentality to be frustrating, even maddening, at times, since, typically the more minds that come together, the more lag there will be until a decision. I know that many share my feelings, and in fact, the majority of corporate decisions are made on an individual basis. It is always easiest to have someone to point the blame at if things go wrong. Is this mentality the most effective decision making tool that we have in our arsenal?

In the HBR article entitled, The Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives, Thomas Seeley analogies the group think process to that of Honey Bees. Professor Seeley explains an effective method for maximizing our collective IQ, and ultimately obtaining better solutions then one might without a group. His five step method is below:

  1. Remind the group’s members of their shared interests and foster mutual respect, so they work together productively.
  2. Explore diverse solutions to the problem, to maximize the group’s likelihood of uncovering an excellent option.
  3. Aggregate the group’s knowledge through a frank debate.
  4. Minimize the leader’s influence on the group’s thinking.
  5. Balance interdependence (information sharing) and independence (absence of peer pressure) among the group’s members.

Decision making is arguably the most overlooked competency in organizations today.  People are promoted based on an assumption that they are better decision makers than others.  Yet, group decision making proves to be an insurmountable hurdle for many corporations today. Mastery of both theory and implementation of this soft skill will not only positively impact your corporation, but also your personal brand. Practice this skill and help to raise the collective IQ of the group.

 

**Sorry, I left out the birds….

The Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives

 

05-Creating & constructing good solutions, Uncategorized

Keep yourself from walking the plank: How to Make Great Decisions for your Organization

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Group Decision Making
Making great decisions for your organization

Bain & Company published an article, “How Organizations Make Great Decisions” by Michael Mankins and Jenny Davis-Peccoud. Mankins and Davis-Peccoud claim that organizations whose decisions fail are due to dysfunctional processes.

Through their experience, they found that firms which established a “structured approach to decisions, one that ensures agreement on criteria, facts, alternatives, commitment and closure” are successful in making great decisions. These companies not only have high-quality decisions and execution but their enablers allow the decision process to move smoothly and quickly.

Every company’s structured decision approach is going to differ based on company culture and governance but they should include five critical elements: criteria, facts, alternatives, commitment and closure.

Critical Elements
The five critical elements of structured decision making and the enablers that support them
  1. Criteria: Know the goal of your decision and clarify the criteria for making the decision. For example, if the firm wants to give an end-of-month discount offer for customers, the goal will be to increase end-of-month sales by 15%. The criteria tells us whether the decision to offer a discount was effective.
  2. Facts: Find the precise facts you need to understand the scenario, create alternatives and come to your decision. If the facts directly relate to the decision making criteria, you can use the data, there is not a need to find all data available.
  3. Alternatives: Evaluating alternatives improves the quality of decision making. Ask the recommender, “What alternatives did you consider and reject and why?”
  4. Commitment: The group must commit to the decision. Hopefully everyone agrees on it as well, but once the decision is made, all parties must support the decision for it to succeed.
  5. Closure: Making the decision and committing to it is only the first step. Without communication of the decision, taking responsibility for execution, setting timelines for Implementation, and creating a feedback loop to monitor the performance of the Implementation, the decision will not happen.

The last element spoke to me the most. Often decisions at my company are made that are not properly implemented. The decisions are executed poorly and never reach their intended effect. Or the decision fades away and is never implemented.

In my opinion, the last element could be the most time consuming part of the decision making process. It is imperative for management to work through the challenges facing the implementation, monitoring the feedback loop for the decision’s progress. If the decision is not achieving its desired result, management must act quickly to adjust the implementation.

Mankins and  Davis-Peccoud identified four ways that companies can enable great decisions:

  1. Take the time to plan, prepare and implement the decision
  2. Do not try to accomplish everything in one meeting
    • Discuss operating reviews and strategy conversations separately
    • Discuss facts, alternatives, and make the decision in separate meetings
  3. Only escalate if necessary and have guidelines to know when decision making escalation is necessary
  4. Use company created tools and templates for many, if not all, strategic decisions

My main take-away from the four enablers is to not use one meeting to accomplish all steps of the decision making process. For a large decision that affects many people, it is better to focus on each step of the decision making process separately. At first this sounds like too many meetings to come to a decision. However, if Mankins and Davis-Peccoud are correct, setting a meeting for each stage of the decision making process will keep the process moving and allow management to consider the facts, alternatives, make the right decision, and set the implementation plan.

My department is currently considering changing how we approach software implementations. We want to be seen more as marketing consultants than software trainers. I am going to take this decision making approach to my team and ask that we use this process as we go through changing our implementation strategy.

06-Building a case, 07c-Telling stories, evaluating evidence

Intuition + Data = Good Decisions and Compelling Storytelling

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One of my reasons for attending business school is to improve my decision making skills. I typically apply the mantra “follow your gut,” when making decisions, but have quickly found that this doesn’t fly in the business world.  Colleagues want evidence based recommendations, which in my mind means I have to work with numbers (not my favorite).  Fortunately, incorporating both data and intuition can result in good decisions and compelling storytelling.

In this article by Andrew McAfee, we learn from specific examples that human judgment alone does not trump algorithms. So is the sum of our experiences and beliefs worthless? No! It’s all about using judgment or opinions as inputs to data models. Unfortunately, many people get this process turned around and disregard data that doesn’t align with their opinions.

From there, you can use data to tell compelling stories and build persuasive business cases. In this HBR blog, Walter Frick interviews Jim Takersly on how data and stories enhance each other. At one point, data is referred to as “medicine” and the story as something that helps you consume that medicine. I’d have to agree with that metaphor, but I also understand how data can give a story shock value or credibility. There are many different kinds of stories to tell with data. Here are ten.