When I think of decision making today, the key words that jump out: data-based, collaborative, slow, safe. Im sure there are others and acknowledge that we all are in different environments and experience different things, but I bet at those decision characteristics will resonate at some level with you. Well, as a leader, decision making is and will always be a prominent (or the most prominent) responsibility of your role. No matter the domain, the decisions keep coming day after day. You know this.
Decision making is a skill that most of us have been forced to develop on our own. It isn’t taught specifically in school. It’s not a topic in MBA programs. Sure, we discuss the outcomes of decisions of others and occasionally wade into the process someone went through, but we don’t actually learn a repeatable process in a structured way (and no your undergraduate Logic course doesn’t count).
I have bad news…I’m not going to endeavor to do that here now. It’s a complex issue with multiple types of processes and I am quite sure I don’t have the right answer. Heck, if you Google it, you’ll see just shy of a billion different naming conventions for types of decisions and decision making processes. Imagine if Math or Science were that way! Thankfully we’ve agreed on what the Sciences are and we actually learn the basics as teens and can go deeper in our academic careers, with multiple specialties. Do we use Geology every day? Probably not (although we experience it by being on Earth). Do we use decision making every day? Ummmmmmm hopefully.
So, as leaders (or as employees or just as humans), one of the skills that we must use multiple times daily, we don’t have a common understanding of how to make decisions or tools to evaluate our decision making process. That doesn’t set us up for success, unless we’ve had the good fortune to learn a successful decision making process on our own. Be clear, this doesn’t mean people don’t make good decisions or can’t make the “right” decision without some process that we all agree on. What it does is create very inconsistent decision outcomes from person to person even with the same facts, information, experience, and so on. So as a leader, it becomes really challenging to make decisions and to understand the decisions of others.
Context matters as well. Many folks in larger organizations don’t understand who actually “owns” a decision, let alone how it should be made. Who is the actual decision maker? What is everyone’s role in the decision process, if there is one?
So where does that leave us? As a leader, we often aren’t clear on who the decision maker is. Our teams are even more confused on who decides what. They don’t know if they are really empowered or only empowered when the leader (or the leader’s leader) agrees. Additionally, none of us (leaders, leader’s leader, employees, etc.) have an agreed upon framework to make, evaluate, or understand decisions.
Acknowledging and understanding this environment, I do have some advice on critical decisions in the workplace:
- Assume you own any decision you are involved in
- Take time to share your decision making process and hear the processes of others
Why? I always assume decision maker status so that I am rigorous in my research and thought process, don’t fall prey to groupthink, and can hold myself accountable. Even when I don’t end up owning the decision, Ill have clarity on how I felt about it and can watch the outcomes to see if my perception was aligned to the results I wanted. Id much rather be prepared to make the decision and be forced to defer to someone else than the opposite. Additionally, during a discussion about the topic, I want to hear the different processes that others used so that I can evaluate my thinking. Im more than happy to share mine as well, so that folks can (hopefully) understand why I ended up where I did relative to a decision.
Those two things can help improve decision making for me as person, for my team, and for my company so long as more and more people become comfortable participating. And with no gold standard to measure against, constant improvement is our highest aspiration.
View from the Middle 