The Lost Art of Decision Making

The consequences of poor dialogue and decision making in leadership teams are only too well known – a lack of challenge and open debate leading to poor, sometimes catastrophic business decisions; reputation threatening issues not being discussed; meetings being viewed as necessary rituals rather than as opportunities to gain new insights. Yet despite this, very few leadership teams actively look at the quality of the conversations they have and decisions they make.

In our fast paced world I see more and more teams making poor decisions, mainly due to pressures of pace! I'm sure you can think of examples in your world.

I'm also sure that you've been in a meeting that is so fast paced that there is no time to think, reflect and make the right decisions. I call these 'problem - solution' meetings, where the emphasis is on a quick solution. If we have an action plan it was a good meeting!

Typically the wrong people are in the room, not enough time is spent understanding and challenging the problem, not enough thinking, reflecting, mulling it over and often too quick to come up with a solution that isn't going to be implemented.

In this article I want to share my thoughts around effective decision making and how our energy and mental process all play a part, as well as our intuition, gut and heart feelings. In this article I want to focus on the mental processes though, I'll share more about gut and heart decision making in future articles.

In terms of our energy in decision making there are six mental process areas we can focus on. What's interesting is that we all of us have our unique motivational pattern of using the mental areas. Without knowing it we tend to spend more time in the areas we have energy in and are motivated in and less in the ones we don't!

If you are highly motivated in discovery and fact finding you could end up in data overload and no way to make a great decision. Or you may be more motivated in gettings things done and forge ahead without exploring the data or ideas enough.

Another challenge we have is that if any of the six areas are low energy for us, or non-existent, it's easy to completely miss out on elements of effective decision making. Particularly if our team are very similar. We've all heard of the dangers of groupthink!

Let's go on an journey together to explore the decision making areas to share with you what I mean. First of all we can look at the big picture and break down the process to 3 core stages of decision making:

Next we can break the 3 areas into 6 key aspects of decision making:

And finally we can explore how we interact and communicate at each level of decision making:

What this all means is that we have a unique decision making process and unique way of interacting with people when using it... it's like our subconscious way of doing it.

For example we could spend all are energy in the Commitment areas and not spend enough time in the Attention and Intention stages - or vice versa. Or we might want to work in a private way for Attention and Intention and then sharing in Commitment - and everyone then wonders where you are coming from and where you got that idea from as you have shocked them and haven't taken them on a journey.

Another example I often see is when meetings are full on and there is no time for Intention - ie reflection! Many people are Private in Intention which means they like to go inside there own mind and think and reflect on the data and what is being proposed.

When was the last time you saw reflection time on a meeting agenda? We have to manage this Private Intention and allow people time to reflect. How many times have you been to a meeting and agreed something and then left the meeting and on reflection had second thoughts? It's probably because you are Private in Intention!

In order to apply this really effectively you need to expand your knowledge on energy, interaction, team dynamics and the questions we need to use to make great decisions. 

This list of questions which follows will be helpful to you in ensuring that all facets of the decision making process are considered. As you progress you can become more and more aware of the favourite preferences of your staff or colleagues ? this will also give you additional help in knowing how to motivate them.

Do remember, however, to guard against the automatic exclusion or deletion process that we can unwittingly apply ? our natural biases automatically move us to screen the things out that challenge us ? and we are usually unaware that this is happening.

Here are the decision making questions...

INVESTIGATING   

• Do you have all the data?
• Do you really understand the current situation or problem?
• Is your information precise?
• Have you missed anything?
• Have you grouped the issues?
• Have you made the connections?

EXPLORING            

• Do you appreciate the possibilities?
• How many angles have you considered?
• How many solutions have you considered?
• Are you accepting the current situation too readily?
• Are you unwittingly blocking contributions?
• Are you stuck?
• Are you afraid of being distracted by seemingly irrelevant ideas?
• Have you expanded the scope sufficiently?

DETERMINING       

• Have you built sufficient resolve?
• Have you really overcome the obstacles?
• Have you gripped the situation?
• Have you formed a strong basis for your action?
• Are you ready to persevere?
• Have you brought pressure to bear?
• Are you being resilient?

EVALUATING       

• Are the issues clear?
• Are you being realistic?
• Have you weighed the pros and cons?
• Have you ranked them in order of importance?
• Have you systematically compared all the options?
• Have you established the relevant issues?
• Is there clarity of purpose?

TIMING                     

• Are you alert to the opportunities?
• Is there tactical advantage to be gained?
• Is now the right time to act?
• Have you taken time for things to develop?
• Have you increased the pace of activity?
• Is it better to speed up or slow down?

ANTICIPATING 

• Where are you going?
• What is the goal?
• What are the consequences?
• What are the steps required?
• What are the strategic implications?
• Have you examined the possible outcomes?
• Is there a trend?
• Are your Action Plans live?              
• Are you measuring progress?

So give them a go. At your next team interaction explore your problem and when ready to make decisions use the questions as a guide to generate dialogue and conversation.

Let me know how you go on.

Want to learn more about how to build winning teams > www.thesuccessfactory.co.uk/leadershipathlete

Graham Wilson is the UK’s #1 Leadership Trainer, author of Leadership Laid Bare! and founder of Successfactory?

www.grahamwilson.com

Leadership Laid Bare! is available from amazon.co.uk