Elevate Your Decision-Making: The KNOT Approach

Decision-making is an essence of leadership, influencing the trajectory of teams, departments, and organisations. As leaders, your choices shape strategic directions and future outcomes, impacting the lives of your team members and stakeholders. Each decision, whether big or small, carries the weight of responsibility and opportunity. It's through your thoughtful and strategic decision-making processes that will navigate challenges, seize opportunities, and chart a course for success.

In every phase of life, and especially in leadership roles, the art of decision-making is not just a skill—it's a critical responsibility that defines our effectiveness and legacy.

KNOT is an acronym which encompasses below 4 key categories for information needed to have effective decision-making:-

1. Know (K): This refers to factual information about the situation which we learnt from verified articles, books, journals and research papers etc
2. Need to Know (NTK): Additional information which we have to gain for a sound decision, which might involve more research, practical, hands-on or other subject matter expertise opinions
3. Opinionated (O): This includes personal beliefs and perspectives that we have which may influence the decision. We need to recognise our own biases and also need to understand group of others offering opinions
4. Thoughts We think we Know (T): This covers assumptions or incomplete information that could be misleading as well. It's important to identify these gaps in your knowledge before making any decision

Let me illustrate with an example that reflects how this framework guided my approach recently:-

I received an invite for the upcoming meeting to decide the support rotation for our critical services, I applied the KNOT framework to ensure a thorough and effective decision-making process as described below:-        

• Know- I conducted a thorough assessment of our current rotation setup, looked into both ongoing and historical data to gain an understanding of its performance. This involved analysing metrics such as Time to Resolve (TTR) to gauge our efficiency in handling issues. I validated my analysis with various reporting tools and factual data references we have, This analysis provided valuable insights into our capacity constraints and allowed me to make data-driven decisions to optimise our rotation strategy.
• Need to Know- To gain a in-depth understanding of our current rotation setup, I initiated a meeting with team members to hear their perspectives firsthand. I also solicited their input on potential solutions. Additionally, I reached out to our customers to gather feedback on any issues they were facing. Furthermore, I consulted with other organisational leaders, leveraging the expertise of those who have successfully running support setups. By engaging in these discussions and cross-referencing insights from multiple sources, I was able to gain deeper insights into the problem and develop informed strategies for improvement.
• Opinionated- It's essential to recognise and address bias and fallacies to ensure fair and effective decision-making. For example, assuming that one team member is an expert in resolving support issues may lead to overburdening them with support rotations, potentially resulting in burnout or diminished performance. However, considering alternative perspectives is crucial. Perhaps the subject matter expert (SME) himself is genuinely interested in contributing to support rotations to enhance product stability. Hence to validate this opinion, an open dialogue with the SME is imperative. With this, I had mitigated bias and made more informed decisions that benefit the team and organisation
• Thoughts We think we Know- In my experience, I've learned that no-one knows everything perfect, To overcome this, I've made it a priority to actively listen and remain open to diverse perspectives, especially during meetings with geogrhapically distributed team where lot of other factors comes into play like Timezone challenges, cultural, regulationsBy creating space for different viewpoints to emerge, we gain a deeper understanding of the issue at hand before jumping to conclusions. Additionally, I've cultivated a culture of openness to feedback and counterarguments within my team, encouraging thoughtful discussion and ensuring that our choices are grounded in sound reasoning