Filed under: Business Resource
‘The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.’
-Flora Whittemore
Decision making is part of everyday life as a leader. Making important decisions can be the difference between success and failure. It’s very easy for people in businesses to operate in a comfort zone, why they let others make decisions for them in order that they don’t mistakes. Interestingly, reluctant, fear driven workers who are scared of making decisions for fear of reprimand, never really progress in their careers. Organisations need people who are willing to stick their neck out and make informed decisions. However, if you are making decisions there are good and bad approaches to this. Often decisions can either not be made, due to the cardinal sins of procrastination, or not wanting to upset other people or over prioritising other items (whilst spending a disproportionate amount of time thinking that they should nail that decision). Alternatively for some, decisions can be made from a dominant leader- or in a rash, unwise manner without gathering the appropriate information needed to make a good solid successful decision. Michael Roberto, a professor of management at Bryant University has suggested:
We don’t get enough divergent thinking in the decision-making process. There is a natural tendency for us to converge pretty quickly on either one option or a small set of fairly similar options. We don’t often canvas a wide range of alternatives or perspectives. Often it happens because we frame a problem in a certain way and once it’s framed that way we can’t break out of that frame. For example, in a business context if a company was losing market share, we might get hung up on framing it as a problem of price. The discussion narrowly becomes focused on issues of pricing, as opposed to broadening it to think of all the factors that could be affecting market share.
Clearly within good teams, there are different skills sets, personalities, levels of experience and gifting. But it seems as though this wealth of experience is not brought out into the light in ways that it could be. People remain silence, or are silenced. The cynic is given the cold shoulder and labelled as the negative one to change. Strong personalities push an agenda through with zeal and passion, causing others to decide not to take them on, as they may not be able to compete on a verbal or quick fire intelligent conversation. So many conversations are not won on the basis of the right decisions, but on the ability to influence and present information in line with the enthusiasts belief.
Roberto suggests that when it comes to making decisions some leaders fall into three common traps:
Leaders who have committed a lot of time and money and energy to something and they don’t want to waste that up-front cost, so they keep going and often escalate their commitment. We see this in football. You sign the player to a big, guaranteed contract and then they don’t perform well. If somebody else is performing better, the other player should play. But because you’ve paid him all that money, you feel compelled to keep playing the player. You exacerbate your error by doing that, but you feel compelled.
When we look for information, we often gather data to confirm what we already believe. We allow our pre-existing beliefs to slant the way we gather information and therefore we don’t get a good assessment of what to do.
Instead of thinking about the whole range of past experience, we allow a very vivid recent event to colour our perception of the future.
So how do we avoid this trap of making decisions, when stopping making any decisions at all is not an option. Afterall, as Pythagoras put it, ‘Choices are the hinges of destiny’.
Whether it be decisions made on a personal basis, or within a professional capacity, we’d like to pick out 6 areas to consider in decision making.
1. The most important attitude for a leader is the willingness to suspend belief, to recognise that they only see in part and want to get input and shaping from different personality types, skill sets, and experience levels. Ego is often the biggest obstacle to learning and good decision making, as either people are too fearful of asking for help for fear of how that makes them look, or they think they know best and therefore don’t want others input. A healthy level of sceptism to your decisions enables healthy reflection throughout the different stages of implementation.
2. Get the most out of your decision making team. Why is it that some people always seem to function in a completely different way from us? They are too slow, too risk averse, too reckless, too careless, too optimistic, not realistic, overly cautious. People tend to want others to see the world through the same lens that they do. But your view of the world is completely and utterly unique. You do not think the same as any other person on the planet- you may have similarities, but they have not had your experiences that have shaped you. Like seriously, do I really expect people to have played Monopoloy as much as me as a child! So therefore, we’ve got to work hard to get the best out of each other. And that my friends start with having a level of understanding. Now if you had the luxury of hours to sit back and chew the cud with everyone, learning the decisions that have shaped their outlook, you would have a good idea. But sometimes, we don’t have that luxury, or we don’t know how to help that shape our understanding of their approach. I’m a big fan of personality profiling tools (Myers Briggs, Enneagram, Strengthfinder) and by utilising these tools, you begin to approach the ways your colleagues think and approach decisions.
3. Empower people to make good decisions. Working within a non blame culture where people are encoruaged to think through decisions is positive. People are always going to make mistakes, but if you are managing people, where are you going to draw the line in their decision making. Do you really want people never to make a mistake- or not to make the mistake more than once, and to ensure that the mistakes that they make are never too critical and there are appropriate safety nets in place. We all learn through our mistakes, and someone, somewhere allowed you the space to think for ourselves. They believed in you and were willing to take a risk that you wouldn’t mess everything up. Helping people feel empowered to make decisions gives people a sense of ownership, and more often than not a desire that they would do well. If you make a decision, learn not to blame yourself, but to reflect on it healthily.
4. Reflect on your decision making processes and of those you manage. Ask the probing questions on how to make decisions. Sometimes, we focus too much on a bad decision and critique that; but if we focused more of our energies on critiquing the decision making progress, then we help ourselves and others be equipped to make decisions in all situations. How, What, When, Why, Who. Amazing 5 words that strip things back down.
5. There
are approaches many are familiar with: writing out the Pros and Cons of a decision, Brainstorming on a whiteboard with others, visualising the decision as a person and having a conversation with it, sourcing out different viewpoints, crowdsourcing (gathering the views of many often via the web), Worst case scenario implications, whether you’d mind the decision being shared on Primetime News, Matrix decision making (eg in Myers Briggs language a decision having to go through Entrovert, Introvert, Entuiative, Sensory, Feeling, Thinking, Perceiving and Judging filters ensuring a balanced viewpoint. It’s important to learn the skills and approaches that are good for you and your team, to vary them so that you don’t get stale and to use them to your benefit. If people want me to go into any more detail about any of these approaches, leave a comment and we’ll create some further posts breaking these down.
6. Being flexible. Don’t get so bogged down in the ways that you make a decision, that you spend all your time making decisions but not getting anything done. Know which decisions have minimal impact and to think too long and hard about it is not cost effective, and others require more deliberation. Know who needs to be drawn into what decisions, and don’t get involved that need not involve you. Clearly, a good pattern of delegation and working with people who you can trust to successfully deliver on their responsibilities. If you are getting involved in lots of decisions that gobble up time that junior colleagues can do, either you are compensating for a lack of ability in these staff and you don’t trust them to come through (more training needed for them, or they’re in the wrong role) or you’ve potentially got an issue with control (um…I mean attention to detail) and letting others do their jobs well. Use your energies to fight the right battles, and make those decisions that drive the business forward in sizeable steps.
Decisions can take you into exciting, life fulfilling successful places. Or it can be quite the opposite. The critical thing is to start excercising your skills in making those decisions:
‘When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice’.
-William James
The author, Paul Arden tells of a story he calls his Finest Hour.
“I had been working with Richard Avedon in New York for a very ordinary client in the fashion industry. The theme was African print dresses. I wanted the models to be black and oily, dusty, dirty and wild Leni Riefenstahls Nuba Woman was the brief.
Avedon asked me whether we could paint the models up, to which I said yes. He then asked me if he could put the skirt on the head. I swallowed and said yes. I didn’t see the point of employing him and then not using him. I suggested a wild pig in the background. He said no; the subject itself is the story. A lesson in itself. He seemed to be enjoying the shoot, and I asked why he was so enthusiastic when he was in a position to do whatever he wanted to do all the time.
He said, ‘It’s not true Paul. I am employed by Vogue and they tell me what they want is not always what I am interested in but I have a studio to run. So I do it.’
Quite an eye opener. I was freer than he was. After the shoot I walked out of the studio on 74th street into a drizzly day with a yellow box of 10 x 8 Kodachromes under my arm.
I remember the moment vividly. My feet seemed to not touch the pavement and I thought, ‘I am going to be fired for these pictures’. Would I rather be fired for having done them or not be fired having not done them? There was no doubt in my mind. I would rather be fired.
Those few seconds were my greatest moment in advertising. When I got back and showed them to my partner he thought I was mad. Fortunately the client loved them. ‘This is art,’ he said. They won every award there was to be won.”
Arden had to make a decision that would determine his career. It was a tough decision but he based it around what he believed in and it turned out to be one of the best decisions he has ever made. What’s going to be the best decision you’ll make this month?
