NGOs - Operational Decision Making

Humanitarian crises are, by definition, unique and unpredictable events. In such circumstances, the rules may not apply, capacities are not sufficient to meet demand, resources are overwhelmed and the situation will most likely change rapidly and even escalate.

Humanitarian contexts are operationally challenging and require an exceptional number of decisions to be made, from small and trivial to incredibly complex and many decisions must be taken under enormous time pressure which requires decision-makers to think and act differently than they would otherwise.

Decisions are the coin of the realm in the humanitarian sector, every success, every mishap, every opportunity seized or missed is the result of a decision that someone made or failed to make.

The problem humanitarian workers face is not a lack of appropriate tools because as humanitarian workers and decision-makers we have a lot of tools “Information Management Tool, Data Fusion Matrix, SOPs, Risk Matrix, Situation Analysis, Case-Based Decision Analysis, Qualitative Scenario Analysis…etc.” and this is because humanitarian organizations themselves shape the framing of potential decisions, which can help decision-makers to react quickly but may also reinforce path dependency and tunnel vision.

What do we mean by decision-making in the humanitarian sector?

 There is no agreement of what the term actually means. On one hand, some view decision making as a singular event, a moment when a choice is made, others see decision-making as a process, where it is difficult to distinguish one exact decision moment. Those who see decision-making as an event tend to focus primarily on the identification of and the selection between a set of options, while those with a more process orientation focus on an ongoing cycle of problem-solving: gaining experience, testing what works and building upon what is then known to the decision-maker.

 What decisions are being made?

The decisions humanitarians are making include everything from whether to start a new response activity, to how to deal with a staff disciplinary concern, prioritize their time, whether to share resources or information with another organization and everything in-between which might include ( response options, activities target groups, information gathering, coordination, and partnerships, Go/No Go, human resources, logistics, ways of interventions...etc. ).

Sometimes its easy decisions and sometimes it's difficult and complicated and what makes a decision complicated in the humanitarian sector is that you have an impact on people (your team, the community, donors, authorities...etc ) so you always need to think about the impact and the outcomes of your decisions.

Who is involved in decision-making?

This is a key question and its important to know 1- who is the "decision-maker" and 2- who is involved in the "decision making".

I saw in an article in the Relife Web website saying " 19% of decisions were made by individuals alone, 57% of decisions were made by individuals after consulting others, and 24% of decisions were made by group". I don't know if this is true but I think there is a social nature of most decision-making processes, even those decisions recorded as being made by an individual I’m sure it will appear in many cases to have been influenced by others.

The humanitarian sector is all about humans so you will always need to involve others in one way or another, sometimes involvement means "informing" them only, sometimes it means" discussing", and sometimes it means" let them guide/inspire/support/mentor" you in taking the decision.

How long does decision-making take?

The answer will come from understanding the length of time between realizing a decision needed to be made, and the eventual making of the decision.

In the humanitarian sector, I saw some decisions took 10 minutes, one hour, one week, one month or even 3 months. There is no specific time or duration for taking a decision and I didn't see a relationship between the length of time taken to make a decision and the overall perceived quality of that decision.

The length of time taken to make a decision is fairly equally distributed between the type of decision being made (for example, whether the decision was about response options or partnerships or hiring someone or GO/No Go..etc).

It's important to take time to involve other people in strategic decisions and its also important to make decisions quickly in operational/day to day decisions, so the length is based on the decision that you need to take.

Clearing the Bottlenecks

In my opinion, the most important step in unclogging decision-making bottlenecks is assigning clear roles and responsibilities. Good decision-makers recognize which decisions really matter to performance, they think through who should recommend a particular path, who needs to agree, who should have input, who has ultimate responsibility for making the decision, and who is accountable for follow-through, they make the process routine. The result: better coordination and quicker response times.

Indeed, making good decisions and making them happen quickly are the hallmarks of high-performing organizations.

As humanitarians, we follow the organization SOPs and that guides what decisions we can make or not, it’s difficult to learn how to act and deal with each situation in a university or in a training because you gain the skill and the knowledge of decisions making in the field "learning by doing".I noticed that highly experienced decision-makers are more likely to make proactive decisions than decision-makers with less overall experience.

Unsurprisingly, what I saw in different missions that decision-makers tended to be more reactive when faced with unfamiliar circumstances and more proactive when they understood the nature of the problem/situation, and when making decisions entirely on their own or after consultation with others.

Poor leadership and wrong decisions can create delays, confusion, and missed opportunities. But good leadership can bring value to the organization's activities because eventually, one person will decide. The decision-maker is the single point of accountability who must bring the decision to closure and commit the organization to act on it. To be strong and effective, the person needs good judgment, a grasp of the relevant trade-offs, a bias for action, and a keen awareness of the organization that will execute the decision at the same time involvement of relevant stakeholders.

Humanitarian situations can be framed in a certain way by organizational mandate/policies, which is based on experience, and so can be problematic when decision-makers are faced with new situations. When the frame doesn’t fit, irrelevant information can be gathered, and wrong decisions can be made.

I believe that working in the humanitarian sector is very much about understanding and applying standards. It is also about following guidelines and maintaining coordination, which from one perspective, means that an organization gives up part of its autonomy in decision-making to follow pre-determined routes agreed by others or with others. There are many good reasons to justify this standardization and there is nothing wrong with it. One of the very basic reasons we have “best practice” approaches and standards is to save time and avoid reinventing the wheel in crises.

After being a decision-maker in the humanitarian sector, I realized that pausing and reflecting with my team on how and whether to apply any given procedure, standard or practice presented us with an incredible opportunity. The opportunity to challenge “default” pathways, learn from decisions and find the best ways to make them in certain contexts. From a leadership perspective, there is a huge potential for keeping your team curious, innovative and open-minded throughout the project cycle. I learned that creating a bit more space for making even the most basic of decisions does not have to be about reinventing the wheel. It can be about reinventing the way we work as a team and improve the quality of our work.

These “default” paths in decision-making are sometimes hidden in standards, procedures or in the results of coordination meetings. There are many opportunities in your work that you might often miss by following an existing path without reflecting enough on how it fits into a specific context or project, or without challenging a process to improve.

There is a good space for improvement in the humanitarian sector especially in decisions making but it requires engagement and involvement of people at different levels with different backgrounds. 

Ali Al Mokdad