Barb Vann's Web Site

First of all, thanks to everyone that sent me gentle reminders on where is your next post? I am glad to know that a number of folks find these blog posts interesting and useful!

Today I am writing about an aspect of decision making. Making decisions and executing to these decisions is a critical component to  driving improved change and making forward progress towards your objectives. However, too often companies and people struggle trying to make “the right” decisions. Elements of a good decision often include the decision quality, implementation effectiveness, and timeliness. Recently I attended a webinar on making better decisions faster. There were a couple of ideas that really resonated with me and the experiences I have had when trying to drive decision making and executing to the decisions made. The ideas presented below really speak to the implementation effectiveness aspect of decision making.

1) Treat decisions as a project not a process. While a decision making process such as Kepner-Tregoe Decision Making can be useful in providing a framework for making balanced decisions, the key is to use the process to help you make the decision. When you treat a decision as a project it will have a beginning and an end.

2) Don’t reopen a decision unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Any decision will run into bumps in the road as you execute it. When you make the decision, also specify what would need to change to cause you to reopen the decision. The military uses the Commander’s Critical Information Requirements (CCIR) to deal with this issue. Once the decision has been made take time to talk about what are the 4-5 critical points that would trigger a conversation about changing a decision? If none of the CCIR’s change, the operation goes ahead as planned. This is extremely valuable for teams to be able to know when they should escalate or engage in further discussion as they are taking action on the decision.

3) The presenter did not mention this directly, but I think it is absolutely critical that once a decision is made that you define the next step of action – the action should be an activity that drives you closer to achieving the results of the decision made. I once worked at a place that really excelled at making decisions, however, they did not always define the next set of actions and as a result we kept re-visiting the decision. A word to the wise, keep the momentum of the decision making moving forward and define the next action step.

There are obviously many other factors that play in to making good decisions faster, but the above 3 are not always mentioned and I think they are important components.