Three Aspects to Achieve Decision-Making Premium

Decision making is one of the most important and sophisticated activities for business leaders and professionals today,

Decision making is a daily challenge for most business leaders and professionals because organizations become over-complex, hyper-connected, uncertain and ambiguous. What is more important to effecting good decisions within your organization? A sound process? The relevant information? Or a High-intelligent decision-maker? And how to achieve decision-making premium?

A sound process to frame decision is critical: Part of the problem is in the framing. You need a sound process to frame the decision, spec out your options, weigh them appropriately with the right people, and actually make a decision. The importance of the process becomes critical as decisions become more complex and involve more diverse stakeholders. If you hang around the word data, It’s the process. From an organizational and business optimization point of view - Process is the sequenced series of tasks. What do tasks need to be performed? Next, look at in which sequence these tasks should be performed to generate optimal value. Too many decisions do not have the ambitious performance outcomes that were intended.

The distinction between the decision quality and the outcome is important: If the decision-making process is well designed and well executed, you have the highest probability of getting the best outcome in the state of knowledge accessible at the time of decision. A good process can still get adverse outcomes. All good processes do decrease the risk of the wrong choice, not eliminate it. Too often "Bad Decision" is a judgment of outcome, not decision process.  The decision is not necessarily bad, but the flow and sequence of the subsidiary decision implementations all encounter a different set of context dynamics. In fast moving competitive business environments, the shortcomings inherent in a clear current decision-making knowledge context and top-down vague strategic - 'me-tooism' - style decision-making all lack the much needed essential iterative process dynamics, where the decision is managed as the end effect not the beginning. Enable scenarios and forecast to promote decision alternatives.

The commitment from decision-makers is important to achieve decision premium: That commitment is one that is difficult if the corporate culture is acrimonious and confrontational. It has to do with insufficient time to think carefully about important decisions. Always challenge the groups with the question: Do you think management agrees to just do things without thinking, or would they value the fact that you put some effort in thinking over facts and observations more carefully. Identify with the need for decision making to include building commitment to execution. It includes involvement of some of the deployment team pretty early in the process, as the chosen alternative starts to emerge; and in getting the deployment team leader to sign on "for the duration". People often run away from accountability because they had a personal experience or they have observed others being treated poorly or unfairly when being held accountable for results. Often times when the results do not measure up to expectations. Consequently, they fear the realm of accountability and run for the hills. Unfortunately, such experiences are prevalent in many of organizational cultures which in turn creates the blame game, etc. Mature decision-making cultures take accountability for results and have pride in affecting the outcome good or bad. They learn and then move forward stronger and more robust than before.

Making a decision is a plan to change something in your current situation. Decision making is one of the most important and sophisticated activities for business leaders and professionals today, and at the strategic level, the outcome of decision making will directly make an impact on the survival or thriving of the business.

Posted in: Decision Making