Decision-Making - It’s your job
Decisions, Decisiveness, and Deliberate Decision-Making
Most workplaces don’t make decisions based on a democratic vote. Leaders are chosen and required to make the right, timely, often tough, and occasionally unpopular decisions with imperfect information.
Some of us are decisive by nature; it’s a trait we have possessed for most of our lives. Decisiveness is also a learned behaviour, exhibited by those who make decisions quickly and confidently. The decisive tend to intuit a decision confidently and quickly—racing through the multiple-choice exam, arriving at a conclusion in a meeting while the debate continues, and quick to order in a restaurant, even if they’re the last to arrive.
Regardless of your “nature”, effective decision-making and decisiveness are essential for leaders. The best decision-makers are aided by a solid decision-making process. A process they make transparent, so that their team can depend on and trust their decisions and understand what role, if any, they play in the decision-making.
These deliberate and decisive leaders make the call and move on, not wasting their time and attention second-guessing their work. They recognize that they would ideally like more information, but they are confident in making a decision based on the information available.
Three Elements That Shape Your Decision-Making Style
The pace and confidence that align with your decision-making style are a blend of:
• Reliance on gut or intuition
• The speed at which you process information
• A decision-making framework that guides your thinking
Back to the example of the multiple-choice exam, trusting your instincts speeds your response time. In the high-stakes meeting, processing speed, preparation, and pattern recognition are in play. In the restaurant, the risk and low stakes of ordering the wrong dish don’t warrant your analysis.
The framework is the element of decision-making that I encourage every leader to invest time in. Build yours, use it, adapt it, and your intuition and speed will all improve. You’ll become more decisive.
Build Your Framework – Then Trust It
A decision-making framework reduces the time it takes to make decisions and elevates their quality. At the same time, the leader who has invested the time to develop a framework and uses it consistently makes decisions with confidence, and their confidence is contagious in the best way.
Your decision-making framework helps you:
Categorize decisions according to risk and urgency.
Clarify who should be involved
Identify what information is needed
Apply context using values, commitments and political context as filters.
What Components make up a Strong Framework?
Risk – What is the potential cost of making the wrong decision? Is the risk high or low?
High-risk factors = long-term, reputational, or operational damage.
Low-risk = inconvenient, short-term minor fallout
Think of high as catastrophic, having a long-term impact on many. Think of low as this will sting, I’m embarrassed, but it will blow over in a news cycle.
Urgency – What’s the time frame for making the decision? If it’s not immediate, is the timeline negotiable? What’s the impact of a delay?
Stakeholders – Who needs to be involved, who is affected by the outcome, and who should make the final decision? What’s my role, the role of others, and do they know?
Facts and Sources – What do I need to know, what information is available, and where can I find it? Differentiate between the ideal amount of data and the critical information required to make an informed decision.
Most decisions are made in the absence of perfect information (99% of the time). This is harder for some to accept. However, knowing what facts or data you may be missing helps you to move forward with more confidence. It can also prompt you to negotiate an extension on the timeline for making the decision till you have the critical piece.
Filters – Filters include values, commitments, feelings and politics. Your decisions should align with your values and honour existing commitments.
Use a filter to distinguish fact from feelings. Both have a place, but they are different. A fact may be a data point; it can be proven. A feeling is based on history and may include some bias.
Politics is the reality of most organizations – your experience is the lens that helps you factor in its importance and impact.
Bonus Benefits of your Framework
A robust decision-making framework accelerates or removes low-risk decisions. It helps you identify which decisions can and should be delegated, and which decisions can be made “once and well”.
Better delegation has a host of benefits, the most remarkable being that the right person will take charge of the decision, and it isn’t you.
The once-and-well rule is a time saver for decisions you find yourself making repeatedly. The example most often used is that of the leader who has decided to wear a black turtleneck daily—aka Steve Jobs—never again standing in the closet every morning, deciding what to wear.
Both delegation and once-and-well remove a cognitive burden, freeing you up to focus your attention and time on the right decisions. The ones that you are responsible for, that can’t or shouldn’t be delegated, that require your experience and expertise.
Final Thoughts
The framework is developed when you are not under pressure and is often used when you are.
When the pressure is on and an important decision needs to be made, the framework’s existence reduces the likelihood of reacting or freezing, allowing you to respond, decide and lead.
Accept that your framework, like your decisions, may not be popular with everyone and that it will not yield the desired outcome every time.
It is your job to make decisions and create a system that removes the analysis paralysis that hinders consensus-driven organizations.
It’s your responsibility to be transparent and consistent enough for people to trust your decisions.
Decision-making is one of those skills that requires practice. With a lot of practice, you may also find that you become Decisive. The best leaders balance both.
Do you want to strengthen your framework or your team’s decision-making culture? Reach out. I’d love to hear your approach, and happy to share tools you might find helpful.
