The why and the how to make rapid decisions

In my work, and likely in yours, opportunities present themselves that need rapid prioritization and decision-making. The decisions I’m talking about usually arise as edge cases to your normal work or come from clients needing immediate assistance on an issue. Having a process that you can use to make consistent and sound decisions and one that minimizes the guesswork is critical. Why? Because, saying “Yes” to the wrong opportunity can be more costly than saying “No” to the right opportunity. Plus, when it comes to business you can’t do everything. You must choose the best opportunities for you and for your clients.

We are constantly being bombarded with opportunities that can distract us from our core business mission. Some of these opportunities may just cost too much in resources to be worth chasing. Without a reproducible process you’re likely going to assess each based on variable criteria. Meaning, the things you use to decide may likely change, giving you an inconsistent process and one prone to bias.?

I’ve got a few examples of opportunities that I had to decide on promptly to get you thinking about how to address opportunities in your work. One was an opportunity to provide guidance to a regional electricity authority on Inflation Reduction Act grants and loans to address energy access and equity issues and do so before the application period for the grants and loans expired. A second was to assess how a utility company might best address specific customer groups during and after extreme weather event moratoria and assess any potential regulatory impact; and a third, to assess the value for both parties in entering a long-term service contract with a power industry client.?

Each of these had elements that made them exciting; revenue, stimulating work, solid use-cases, and churn reduction. In all cases time was of the essence. I had just a day or two to decide on if we could do the work and if we should do the work.

We often find ourselves in these situations and need a way to rapidly assess the benefit to our organization and match the risk of each to the opportunity presented.

So, what serves as a guide for rapid assessment? Paramount is that process is critical. As I have been known to say, “process makes good people great and great people excellent”. In this case, the process needs to be fluid, familiar and structured to reduce bias. Plus, I’m guessing that you likely don’t have time to delve into decision making theory, decision tree analysis, Ramsey models or probabilistic graphical models. Nonetheless, we can distill the best elements of decision-making theory and devise something logical, reproducible, and easy to use.?

One such process is the simple factor assessment. Using simple factor assessments can really help you and your teams focus on how best to prioritize the opportunities that come across your desk. While there are several assessments that I use to evaluate opportunities, they aren’t always appropriate for making quick, consistent, reproducible decisions when the pressure is on. ??

In my quiver, I’ve the standard-issue SWOT Analysis (Strength-Weakness-Opportunity-Threat), and the Lean Canvas approach, (which adapts to the Lean Approach, think “Toyota Way” using a 9-part framework to assess the major thematic elements; user focus, waste reduction and iterating on making the idea better). I’m into lean and agile processes. Then there are decision trees and logic gates. All of these are great, but can be too cumbersome. I’m not always going to kick-off a decision tree analysis, SWOT assessment or build-out a Lean Canvas. Those I reserve for business strategy or portfolio management as they are often too high level or too broad in scope for rapid opportunity prioritization.?

There are powerful tools that make rapid decision-making more consistent and that reduce the overall risk in assessing opportunities. Two of such tools are the 5 Factor Assessment (5F) and MARP. I've outlined the critical elements of each below in an easy to use format that you can print out and save. These tools are derived from different sources, so I'm not claiming credit for the original thought. What has evolved for me is the consistency and easy-to-apply format and I’ve adapted my process to accelerate decision-making and fashion a process.

I don't even think too much about the process now. Just knowing these different factors allows a rapid decision if the criteria are met. The decisions derived from these assessments make for consistent rapid decisions with a “no regrets” clause. That is because you'll settle on a framework that works for you allowing real comfort.

Assessing growth is where change really happens and, in my view, leaders of companies don’t push themselves hard enough to get out of their comfort zone. No risk, no reward.?

For 5F, use a grading scale (i.e. 1-5) to assess how you stack up in each area and apply the score to the opportunity. The higher the score the better the opportunity. Set a minimum score threshold to make sure there is a delineation point. MARP relates more on setting thresholds and seeing how the your opportunities stack up against them. MARP, like 5F, is fully portable, so you can take it with your from job to job.

These tools are just as useful for assessing if you should join the PTA, take a new job, or give a talk at an industry conference. I have adapted my decision-making assessments over many years to fit the specifics of what I do in my service to the electric power and energy industry. I hope you enjoy using these in your decision making process. Please let me know if you want to discuss and/or need help in how you might apply a scoring system or similar process to your decision-making. Thanks for reading. [email protected]