“Decision making is one of the most important skills for leaders and managers, and can make or break a career. Yet, and daily life in the workplace, research shows very clearly that we routinely make biased and erroneous decisions. And worse– Most of us have little or no awareness of this fact. Our reflection, default behaviors often get us into trouble, leading us to incomplete thinking, story based arguments, misjudgments of people and friends, and two intuitive decisions that could be profoundly flawed. By understanding the limitations of our “mindware” we can re-architecture behaviors and the way we work, enhance the ability to be more effective in the workplace, and need to listen with success.
Dr. Lee Newman, Dean, School of Social and Behavioral Science, IE
Decision Making - Making Results Happen
✓ The values which guide how they make decisions are more important than almost any other factor in your business's effective functioning today.
• However, just stating those values do not make them so.
✓ When stated vs. actual behavioral values are not aligned, people end up making decisions for the wrong reasons, spending resources on efforts that get overturned, and general schizophrenia in the overall decision making process
• .......... wasting lots of money along the way.
✓ Identifying the core decisions values of the executives - their intent - and putting them into an actionable framework, can result in massive change
• .......... typically in a very short time frame.
You pay the significant salaries for the people at the top, and yet, that superior knowledge and leadership seldom gets translated into the day-to-day behavior of the rank and file.
If you can articulate the core VALUES (principles) - statements that reflect why you make decisions the way you do - you have a good start to effective change, but only a start. These are not things, these are values - statements that reflect why you would make a decision one way or another.
How is this, you ask? You have principles defined, and yet we still struggle with decisions and change?
We can help you put these into a powerful tool for effective management in your organization.
A. Step 1 - Articulate your decision values
B. Step 2 - Allocate into affinity groups, based on a consistent framework
C. Step 3 - Aggregate these into the essence of the affinity group; typically you will have 5-6 different major groupings
NOTE: These groups are typically in conflict - this needs to be resolved - see next steps
D. Step 4 - Break down these aggregated decision values, into business and I/T implications - concrete outcomes specific to your organization.
E. Step 5 - Create a logical framework for applying these decisions in a prioritized fashion for every decision, and make it part of doing business going forward. This piece of the work can be tricky and often iterative to find the right breakdown.
Change cannot be effectively driven from dictating process, or technology, or even budget, However, change IS all about executive intent - translating the decision values of your executives into behavioral actions of everyone in the organization.