Seeking valuable input is the primary source of healthy, robust debate. The right people with the relevant expertise need to clearly articulate their views to help the accountable decision-maker (aka you) broaden their perspective and make the best choice. This doesn’t mean you should seek out everyone’s opinion.
For a decision to be properly formed, you need to consult with those who can contribute in a meaningful way. While consensus-seeking should never be your goal, this doesn’t give you the freedom to act unilaterally. 1) Great decisions are shaped by consideration of many different viewpoints. Based on my experience, these are the eight core elements of great decisions. That said, if you had a checklist of attributes to prospectively evaluate a decision (like the one provided below), you could predict in advance whether or not it is likely to be a good one. But if you rely only on retrospective analysis, the path to better decisions can be tenuous: Hindsight is incredibly prone to attribution bias. You’ll discover, over time, whether a decision was good, bad, or indifferent.
The only surefire way to evaluate the efficacy of a decision is to assess the outcomes. That’s something that will get you - and the team - noticed. While others vacillate on tricky choices, your team could be hitting deadlines and producing the type of results that deliver true value. The Eight Elements of a Great DecisionĪs a new leader, learning to make good decisions without hesitation or procrastination is a capability that can set you apart from your peers. Over the last 10+ years of my corporate career, putting this philosophy into practice has helped me lift my leadership performance and greatly enhance the outcomes of my team. I distilled my learnings into the eight elements that optimize both the speed and accuracy of my decisions. If I could be disciplined enough to impose my own time pressure on decision-making, could the resulting decisions be both faster and better?.Knowing that I can make good decisions under severe time pressure, what’s the DNA of those decisions - what actually makes them good?.What I found was that the decisions I made under pressure were at least as good, if not better than the ones that I spent days agonizing over. During my years as a senior executive, I was regularly asked to make quick, critical decisions in response to sensitive events - a negative media story that required an immediate response, a procedural breach that was being investigated by regulators, a material change to financial guidance, a catastrophic asset failure, and so on. Worse, consensus-seeking is almost always excruciatingly slow, and the higher up a leader climbs, the less often they are afforded the luxury of time. The result is a decision that is the lowest common denominator: a choice that everyone can live with, but no one is really happy with. Seeking broad consensus requires considerable compromise to incorporate each person’s perspective. When my colleagues smiled and nodded their collective heads, it reinforced (in my mind, at least) that I was an excellent decision maker.īut as time wore on, I saw the fallacy of this approach. Like many young leaders, early in my career, I thought a great decision was one that attracted widespread approval. If you consider all of the elements listed above, then it’s simply a matter of addressing each one with a heightened sense of urgency. Great decisions balance short-term and long-term value. Finding the right balance between short-term and long-term risks and considerations is key to unlocking true value.Great decisions address the root cause, not just the symptoms. Although you may need to urgently address the symptoms, once this is done you should always develop a plan to fix the root cause, or else the problem is likely to repeat itself.Seek input and guidance from team members who are closest to the action. Great decisions are made as close as possible to the action. Remember that the most powerful people at your company are rarely on the ground doing the hands-on work.The right people with the relevant expertise need to clearly articulate their views to help you broaden your perspective and make the best choice. Great decisions are shaped by consideration of many different viewpoints.That’s something that will get you - and them - noticed. As a new leader, learning to make good decisions without hesitation and procrastination is a capability that can set you apart from your peers.
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