Who is going to make this decision?

This is ultimately the most important decision in decision making.

I've had this discussion a bunch of times and am often surprised at the pushback this question gets.

It's not uncommon for people to have recommendations, opinions, or suggestions that do not match with all or some members of a team. I have actually found that simply increasing the size of the group beyond 1 will result in a 100% increase in the opinions of the group ??

For this reason, the first step in a decision process should be to define who will ultimately make the decision. By defining who or at least HOW a decision will be made beforehand, you create an environment where everyone understands the process and their part in the decision.

Real world example of this playing out (names have been changed to protect the irrelevant) that I have experienced on several occasions

Jessie is a new executive that has joined our company. We are excited to have them on board and they immediately go to work within their area of responsibility. After a couple of weeks, they set a meeting with me to discuss the Ninja Initiative (a large ongoing project that my team has been working on for about a month). Jessie has several suggestions and opinions about this project and also believes that because they have been hired to oversee an important business process, they should be involved in this project. In fact, they believe that the project should be adjusted and team members should be compensated less for their involvement in this business area and the oversight should be shifted under Jessie's oversight.

You could try and brush this off, get mad, push back, have an argument, run to your CEO and complain (all bad ideas) and these would be very human reactions... but they won't help the business. Here's what I learned from this experience (and having done it wrong many times before I got it right).

Confirm who is ultimately responsible for making the decision about this topic. Then Listen, ask questions, and seek to understand their position and suggestions. But get confirmation from this person on who is going to make the decision. THIS MIGHT GET PUSHBACK...

"Jessie, I'd love to get your input and opinions about the Ninja project, but beforehand we just need to confirm who is responsible for making the final decision on this topic. That way if we disagree, we will still understand who is going to make the final call and be responsible and accountable for the outcome of the decision. It's ok if we don't agree on everything, as long as we get agreement on who is going to make the decision."

Jessie is likely to say something like "we just need to get agreement" or "we will make the decision together". Resist the urge to 'go along' with trying to democratize the decision-making process. If your organization has a structured decision process, then point this out and lean into that structure.

If your organization doesn't have a formal decision process, then you can still push to define one for this specific instance. "who ultimately has the final decision responsibility on this topic?" - this is a very clear way to pre-define that it's ok for reasonable people to disagree.

Obstacles to this approach:

- "We should get agreement and alignment": it's OK for people to disagree. Getting everyone to agree is really asking some people to abandon their own perspective or for members of the team to 'convince' the others. This leads to all kinds of team dysfunctions (groupthink, arguments, ad-hominem attacks, risk avoidance, etc.. etc.. etc...). By taking the convincing of one another off the table, and defining who (or how) a choice is made, you let everyone safely air their evidence-based input and then when the decision is made it won't be based on who is the best 'convincer' but on the pre-defined criteria.

- "Disagree and commit": This is a back door version of "get everyone to agree" - The only thing that changed was substituting the word "commit" for "agree" to give the appearance that a dissenting opinion is ok. This is a negative outcome of letting everyone debate the merits of each others perspectives vs assigning a person to decide based on the overall group inputs. We should ALREADY be committed to the decided direction that is chosen b/c we pre-agreed to who/how the decision would be made.

- The Loudest Voice: I have often seen that the loudest voice on a topic is the one that wins the debate. This turns into some weird United Nations security council instead of a productive team. Everyone starts weighing which topics they REALLY care about and disengages on the ones they feel less strongly about. Leaving each person to 'fight' for their pet project or topic. When this happens you can quickly find that everyone is running after their own priorities and that decisions are made to the benefit of each individual that fights the hardest for a given item. Evidence/data based decision making gets thrown out the window in favor of passionate discussion - often leaving the quieter or less opinionated team members out of the decision process entirely.

- The Echo Chamber: I see this as an outcome of a mono-culture. Businesses have values but really it's the PEOPLE who have values they assign to the business. Value based decision making isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but there is a potential for creating an echo chamber when the values that have been put in place are poorly defined, lack business relevance or do not align with the goals of the organization. The 'echo chamber' is a result of filling a room with people who all think as close to one another as you can get, have very similar backgrounds, world views, personal priorities, etc... OR they all at least feel they need to portray that to be the case.

Example: "Here at WidgetCo Worldwide, we value absurdity above all else. Any attempt at serious or measured interaction is OUT OF BOUNDS". This is a business where an overarching value leaves no room for differences of opinion or perspective and the only people who are going to be able to remain (for long) in the business are the ones that never display any disagreement from this norm. So the monolithic culture that is built leaves no room for differences of opinion b/c the organization has elevated one of it's values to leave no room for dissent.

Values are great - but be careful that you aren't creating an echo chamber where you only heard your own opinions bouncing back.

- Leaning on the wheel: Sr leaders should not be the first to give opinions on topics. There is a lot of overt and indirect influence on the other team members when they speak or vote on a topic. And even casual or off the cuff remarks can have a large impact on the others in the organization or the room. This can be referred to (usually when it's unintentional) as 'steering the ship by leaning on the wheel'. If you make the most senior person in the room speak last, then you can at least give everyone else a chance to give their input BEFORE the leadership voice weighs in. This is also useful if the sr. team member is the final decision maker b/c then they can simply avoid weighing their personal perspective on the decision until they have heard everyone else's suggestions.

- Over Conformity: When people do not feel comfortable dissenting from the group. This is a symptom of a larger issue and can result from a lack of clarity on a process. Similar to the echo chamber in what you hear, the issue is slightly different. It doesn't stem from actual agreement but from a fear of being outside of the group or presenting as being opposed to the rest of the team. The role of leadership is to create a group where people feel comfortable giving their actual feedback without fear of repercussion or reprimand.

Final thought: It is not required that the CEO or the leader/boss/sr team members/P&L owner (or any other hierarchical definition) be the one to make a decision or be the final decider. You COULD let it be a secret ballot vote, you can assign a team member based on their relevant experience with a topic, it's ok to let the vote go to a person who is not regularly in a sr decision position if they have unique and first-hand knowledge of the issue. Really there are many ways to choose how/who will decide. WHO is less important than HOW.