Picture Credit – Scoobie 1993
Few weeks ago, I started reading the book ‘Head, Heart & Guts‘ by David L Dotlich, Peter C. Cairo, and Stephen H. Rhinesmith, which focuses on building complete leaders. Chapter 5 caught my attention because it was dedicated to “Getting Things Done”.
Well, to get things done you need to make many decisions! Don’t you? I wanted to understand the art and science of decision making. To make it an interesting learning experience, I reached out to my favorite Linkedin Group called Leadership ThinkTank.
They are an active group of leaders who voice their opinions and insights to make a difference. I posted my discussion topic: “Decision Making – Why it is not easy” and got 35-plus comments. I personally want to thank Randy Pound, Jeff Hoffman, Bill Frazier, John Haran, John Prpich, David Knowles Leak, Navneet Nayar, Graham Courtney, Naved Khan, Michael Redpath, Amulya Kapoor, Fiorenza, Laura Eardone, Chandan Singh, Olga Hengi, Kirk John Larson, Amanda Bouch, Galen Tom, Bogdan Motoc, Lynn Ferrari, Dr Mark Kilgallon, El (Rick) Beets, Joseph Noone, Gaurav Gupta, John Manning, Rajiv Lochan, Carole Lalonde, Russ Cheeseman and Jose Luis Romero for sharing their deep insights on this topic.
All the comments I received were great, but these two struck a chord with me and got me thinking:
- Indecisiveness is fatal. Go for the 70% rule: 70% assuredness, 70%confidence, 70% due diligence, 70% consensus, by Joseph Noone
- The best decisions are made with the heart, or the intuitive mind, by Laura Coldone
- What separates the inspirational decision versus the emotional decision versus the intellectual decision ? It is all relevant to the mind set and the setting of mind focus in the process of making the decision. The complexity of the simplicity of this process is fascinating, by David Meeker
- Decision making required , trade skill set, knowledge, experience analytic power and a cool head by Arun K Singh
Here is a summary of results on the topic from some of the best leaders on the planet. I recommend following the tread on this topic.
Top reasons for identified for Indecisiveness:
- Very few of us were taught “how” to make a decision, so most of us struggle with the process of making a decision
- Do not want to take responsibility
- Not sure whether it’s the right decision
- Avoid a possible disaster
- Habit to delegate decisions
- Does not want to say “yes” or “no”
- Does not make decisions at all
- Unclear about the Change
- Clarity on outcomes and priorities. Decisions can have scary, painful, unexpected and unintended consequences.
- Fear of failure if you make a bad decision or things just turn out badly.
- Many people actually end up solving the wrong problem, which guarantees disaster.
- Not knowing what decision making tools to use in a given situation
- Not knowing where to get the information needed to support or disprove propositions
- Not knowing who to involve in the process
If you look there are so many reasons, that can stop us from making decision. The statement that made total sense to me was Randy Pound’s take: “Decision making is an art only until the person understands the science (process).”
Here are some strategies the community shared that will help make decisions and getting things done easily!
- Define clearly what the “decision making” is to the decision itself. The definition should include the entire process, including understanding the need, engaging key stakeholders, ensuring effective communication, assessing alternatives, developing consensus, making and planning the decision, communicating, executing, and following-up on the decision. In other words, decision making is a process . . . not an event. (Quality of Data – By Randy Pound)
- Getting quality advice from people you trust and respect
- Go for the 70% rule: 70%assuredness, 70%confidence, 70%due diligence, 70%consensus
- Get out of your comfort zone
- Become accountable and answerable to you and your team
- Identifying the “stoppers” in my life has made the act of decision making much easier.
- Implement a easy process : Define Problem:Develop Alternatives:Evaluate Alternative: DECIDE: Implement & Mointer: Adjust (start the process all over again)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt’s simply rule: If you have consensus on an important matter, don’t make the decision. Adjourn it so that everybody has a little time to think.
- When there is a committed focus, decisions come easier as the internal computations are quicker, sharper and to the point in regards to the goal vision.
Getting things done is easy if you make decision making easy. Let me know what you think?
Related Articles:
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Chaitra,
You have compiled a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of decision making. Your question may have only had 35 interested responsive, yet it was an important topic to explore and discuss. I hope more people view this blog as they may learn something. I know I did. Thanks for sharing.
John
Thanks John for a lovely note. I apprecaite your insights on this topic.
This is a cool post, thanks for sharing, because it “systemizes” something people really struggles on a daily basis. One thing I also think it’s important to define is the importance of “choice” as opposed to decisions as a leadership tool – choice is something you own, versus decision, which is something you get to based on a series of factors that were very well summarized by this blog post.
When YOU choose to go a certain route, you do it in a way that you take total accountability for where that route takes you. The process of “choice” doesn’t ignore all the decision steps you need to follow, on the contrary. A choice without consideration is irresponsible. But once you take your time to consider and analyze all data, consult all the people you consider to be important, you throw all that away and make your choice. Seems odd, but what this allows you to do is to own it. If it goes wrong, you can’t blame on the 70% of the people in the room, or the data source you used, the person that helped you consolidate the calculations, or the stakeholders. That’t why it’s so powerful.
I like the ideas. Leadership also has to do with bringing the right personality attributes together to have a vision, provide the means of rationalization (to challenge/revise options), executive authority (to facilitate sound decisions), evangelist (to communicate the benefits), and finally the execution (to realize the intended outcomes of key decisions). These are best utilized in a team where the individuals excel in one of the personality attributes rather than on or two people who excel at all of the personality attributes. This mitigates bias and engenders the best from each member while providing a high probability that an idea or decision is sound, defendable and has firm commitment and support which is essential to realizing the desired outcomes. Good leadership can still produce very bad results and without sincere support based on sound intellect and peer accountability can be disasterous.
One fundamental aspect that I see missing is the need for clear objectives. Herbert Simon stated that all decisions from the most basic to the ones that involve human well being nad society are triggered with an objective in mind. There’s the example of the walker: The walker contracts the muscle in his leg to move forward, he’s walking to the mailbox, to post a letter (this was originally written in 1957 mind you) to communicate some important information. Each step implies a decision, and an objective.
As it happens, quite often we forget or lose dimension of what the objective or objectives are and our mind falls prey of heuristics.
Any structured approach to the decision making process should begin by identifying the problem at hand and setting objectives for solving it. That in turn, will determine the criteria we use to evaluate the potential solutions.
@ Jose, thanks for sharing your insight. Choices are important to help us make decisions.
@Don, You are correct. Right personality attributes are critical to provide vision, directions, and decisions.
@Octavio, You are so correct. Clear objectives are fundamental for determining choices and then making decision.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Hi Chaitra,
Great blog entry, loved it and this topic is especially important for us entrepreneurs that have to make a decision every day, even not knowing where it is going to take use. Sometimes it is gut-wrenching, sometimes we make mistakes, but fortunately we also have good decisions and get to collect the fruits of it.
Petri