Decisions Decisions Decisions

Have you ever been on a team that regularly revisits decision points without closing loops? Have you gotten stuck and circled around a decision point for longer than you like? Do you or members of your team experience frustration around this issue?

In this week's Learn and Lead Mastermind for School Leaders we've been exploring some common challenges with group decision making, and we've explored techniques and tools for overcoming those challenges.

Here are THREE common hurdles to group decision making:

1. Ambiguity and uncertainty: Decision making in schools can be fuzzy. For example, you might be deciding whether or not to expand your school, but you can’t predict future enrollment trends. Or you need to determine which literacy program to adopt, but it’s unclear who gets to make the final decision (superintendent? principal? literacy director?). In the first example there’s some ambiguity about the what, and in the second, some ambiguity about the who. When teams lack clear and complete information, they may struggle to make informed decisions. Or they may simply delay a decision. Getting clear on what the decision is, and who is making it, is essential.

The RACI Approach could help clarify roles.

2. Groupthink: Groupthink occurs when decision-makers prioritize consensus over critical thinking, leading to a lack of alternative viewpoints and a failure to consider all available options. A culture of nice - where members of a team work to not upset / offend / or disrupt the balance of a team - leads some teams to avoid difficult decisions. To overcome groupthink, decision-makers can encourage dissenting opinions using a protocol like Devil’s Advocate to challenge the group's assumptions.?

Check out the Devil’s Advocate Technique from Harvard Business School, as one way to combat groupthink.

3. Cognitive overload: When decision-makers are faced with too much information, they may become overwhelmed and struggle to make a decision. This can lead to decision fatigue or analysis paralysis. One way to overcome this is to literally see the various potential outcomes of a decision. For those of us who are visual learners, mind mapping, decision trees and SWOT analyses might help us sort through complex decisions.

Check out this video on mind mapping - it’s designed for teachers to use with kids but can apply to all of us. Or, similarly, try a decision tree if you are sorting through a lot of variables / data. A SWOT Analysis might also help an organization sort through copious amounts of information.

I'd love to gather more tools on this topic, so please share away if you and your team have a technique that helps with decision making. And if you'd like to learn about the above-mentioned Masterminds, drop me a message!