Indecision… Yes, No, Maybe…
Undecided it is, then. Indecision is the inability to make a decision quickly.
I am riddled with indecision right now, stuck frozen in a perpetual standstill
while life is whizzing right past me. What is there to say about making
decisions? It can be hard to make better
decisions or any decision at all. I would like to say something really clever
about the topic, but nope, I am sitting here at a loss and it is just me trying
to decide something on my own and believe me, it is difficult enough. Add a
second person into the equation and then pose the question: What we should have
for dinner? Forget about it, you could
end up starving and hangry, or also known as angry from hunger. Let’s add on to
this and get a group together and try to make a decision about what to do or
where to go. Two heads are better than
one? Perhaps, unless you just do not have a meeting of the minds …then say
hello to chaos.
This seems to be the fuel to most
Fox News or CNN newscasts, the Republicans and Democrats cannot reach a consensus,
no one thinks anyone does anything right. One side knows exactly what should be
done, but the other is not listening and vice versa. This bleeds into elections
when it is time to vote for city, county, district, state or national
representatives. Ask a large group of people to decide on anything and there is
so much perturbation that maybe nothing effective will ever happen. Now think
about an organization trying to make decisions, or even your organization
trying to decide what to do and how to do it. If the answer is, let’s do it the
way it has always been done, I cry no! That is a dagger right to the heart of
that organization.
I think this should be the true mark to tell
if an organization is effective or not, ask how good someone’s company is at
decision making. If it is met with a scoff and an eye roll that organization is
very well heading toward peril. If you say your organization is easy, breezy
and doing fine, keep reading anyway, you probably can do even better. But don’t
take my word on this; I am sitting in my pajamas because I couldn’t decide what
to wear today. My Britney Spears t-shirt says hi. I found a great video from
Harvard Business Review that asks the leader of Bain & Company’s Global Organization
Practice how to put effective decision making at the center of your business.
Marcia Blenko details why
decision effectiveness has a positive correlation with employee engagement, the
impediments of good decision making, the four elements of good decision making
and provides insight on the five steps to breakthrough performance in your
organization from a book she co-wrote Decide
and Deliver. She explains why the key driver of performance of an
organization is decisions. The decision capability allows an organization to “cut
through efforts while making an impact on the organization at the end of the
day.” (Better Decisions, 2010) Companies will operate better, have a better
metabolism and see better financial performance in result of decision
capabilities. (Better Decisions, 2010)
To highlight the importance of
employee engagement and the correlation of how decision making relate lets
examine a hypothetical scenario. Take a single task and two employees with
different departments and add the situational ingredients. The task is paper
doll cutting. For Employee A the tools are provided, the instructions rendered,
a work space is designated undivided from distraction. For Employee B the task
is given, but they have to get permission to get scissors and are required to go
multiple places to procure this tool. In addition another department will give
the instructions, but Employee B needs to wait until that department is back
from lunch. Once the instructions are obtained, unfortunately the work space
has been reserved for another department and will have to wait until that
meeting is concluded. Which employee will make better paper dolls? Employee A is
happy and made precise, gorgeous model paper dolls. The few that Employee B
made that was spared by the frustrated paper scrap massacre of 2014 are less
than ideal. Happy people will do better, more consistent work. Blenko points
out that the easier it is for decisions to be made, the more stimulating the
work will be. I believe if it is harder for decisions to be made it forces the organization
to work an uphill battle. If employees felt that they have the talent and
capability to do great work but constantly got a stop sign but knew of another
organization that gave the green light and made using their talent possible, what
would stop someone from saying bon voyage and hang on to that organization?
Clearly having a successful
organization is the goal or else why would anyone start a company in the first
place? Since decisions play a large part in how well the machine is oiled, why
isn’t it easier for good decisions that are effective to be made? According to
Blenko there are four elements to good decision making: quality, speed, yield and
effort. Quality is defined by making a good decision. So, it is not just making
a decision, but a worthwhile choice. Speed is how quickly the decision can be
implemented once it is made. If there is a hot trend that hits the internet,
how quickly can your company realize the potential and beat the competition to
carrying it out, this could be the determining factor of which organization can
pull ahead? Yield is just as important, you made a great decision and acted
fast, but did it turn out as you intended? Execution can make or break the
decision. Rounding out the four elements is effort. Blenko likens this to
Goldilocks. Is it too little, too much or just right? When it comes to cost and
energy you better not put in too much cost and too little energy or the
organizational ship may spring a leak and start sinking. I started to think how
little four elements are and if there was anything missing from it. I feel like
everything ties back to being a sub point to the main four. What if you have a
bad idea? Poor ideas tie back to the
element of quality. The same can be true to your organization’s perception of
the market not being accurate. In my opinion the elements flow from one to the
other in a logical, linear fashion.
The true problem of how companies
can make better decisions is the fact that there are impediments. Blenko points
out that most organizational structures have become so complex that you cannot
simply look at a work chart and distinguish who make the decisions. It does not
matter if you have a great idea at the right time, if you cannot get it in
front of the decision maker it will simply remain a great idea at the right
time, a what could have been moment. I think other factors that I have dealt
with in the work place are control issues. I have seen a single decision maker
who did not allow outside influence and it was my way or the highway. I have
also seen too many people involved that felt that they should be making the
decisions their selves, on their own. Let go of the control, there is no one
best way so let all ideas be heard. Fear and uncertainty impeded a quality
decision executed properly with speed. I really feel it boils down to culture
because culture touches all things inside of an organization. Blenko gives an
account of multiple issues that clog up the elements of good decision making
such as leadership behaviors. It is important to allow for constructive debate
before and not after a decision is made. Sometimes it is not clear who makes
the decisions or who should be involved. Also, there may not be the right
talent in the decision roles (Better Decisions, 2010). Another insightful
detail is that the obvious big strategy decisions are not the only decisions
the organization needs to get right, but also the daily operational decisions
that add up over time.
To sum up how companies can make
better decisions Blenko quickly touched upon the five steps process from her
book. The first is that a company needs to understand how well you are doing
with decision making. Once you understand your challenges then you can work to
correct them. The second step is to identify what the critical decisions are
and what matters most. Next, set the decision up for success with the what, who,
how and when. She says this frames us what the decision is, who is involved,
how will it be carried out and to mark on the calendar when this is taking
place. Her fourth point is making sure the organization supports the decision
once it is in place. This reminds me of buying a heavy work of art and putting
it on a table that is too weak and the legs give out. The culture, talent,
technical systems need to be able to hold up this decision. Lastly and maybe
most importantly, the decision needs to be embedded throughout the entire
organization. Instead of putting a big heavy decision on a table to hold up, it
is really putting it on the shoulders of those in the organization. If everyone
is not holding it up, it may slip through the holes and fall down.
I have often wondered why some of
the places I have worked have been so frustrating and I just could not put my
finger on what was wrong, but I suspected something was amiss. Examining the
culture of an organization and the decision making process this week was like
turning on a bright neon sign pointing to the flaws. I was experiencing without
seeing or understanding and I am only seeing it as it is for the first time
right now. I loved Blenko’s interview with the Harvard Business Review because the
ease of the delivery made me go, ah ha!
I think there is immediate take
away of the four elements in my personal life particularly that I could apply
to making the decision of when to sell my house. Quality, speed, yield and
effort works with when to hit the housing market just as it would with working
with my students as an academic advisor. We have goals of being able to provide
enrollment opportunities to our students each term. A course is only as good as
those who benefit from it. If I do not afford the opportunity to my students to
enroll, then the mission of the University, providing education is not being
gained by those not in classes, at least in a formal sense. I need to make
quality decisions for my students, but also since there is just one of me and
four hundred and fifty students, how quickly I can provide my advisement is
crucial. If I reach you a month before the term or a week before the term, that
changes the chance of that student being ready to decide on a nine week commitment.
Sometimes I have great intentions for an outreach, but if it doesn’t turn out
how I planned, that changes the effectiveness. The same goes for my energy and
the amount of time I can afford to put into my efforts. My effort has to be the
right amount of “enough” or the other three elements will not be able to align
and the decision won’t turn out to be good. The most significant part for me is
taking something as common as decision making, which we do all day essentially,
breaking it down in terms of a simple recipe and then practicing applying it to
situations to see things be put together or break apart.
Reference: How Companies Can Make
Better Decisions, Faster - YouTube. (2010) Retrieved September 6, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbxpg6D4Hk8&feature=player_embedded
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