Viewed as a crucial leadership skill across industries, decision-making not only shapes business performance and prospects, it also dictates the experiences of employees and other stakeholders.
Yet poor decision-making is rife across organisations, teams and managers, leaving HR with plenty of room to bolster development in this domain.
Drawing on my experience of helping people navigate workplace decisions, this article will examine the knotty roots of poor decision-making, and outline six key principles for making sound choices in a complex world.
Common traits in faulty decision-making
When decision-making falters, people can either head in the wrong direction, spin round in circles or simply stand still. Time and other resources are wasted, costs rise and chances to grow are missed. Energy dips, work slows and outcomes suffer.
Decision-making typically falls short in one of two ways. Either a decision is delayed beyond what makes sense, or a poor one is made and executed.
1. Delayed decisions
When it comes to delayed decision-making, managers may rightly have little conviction in a plan. They may lack the authority, or the courage, to deal with consequences. Sometimes lack of data explains a delay, or the right moment has yet to come. These may also be excuses for leadership weakness.
2. Poor choices
Poor decisions emerge when managers miss the, often human, nuances of a situation or fail to account for what they do not know. Formal authority to make decisions does not always align with intelligence, competence or a selfless agenda. A shifting environment may turn a good decision into a bad strategy.
Decision-making in a complex, human world
Two realities make decision-making hard:
- The world of work is complex, shifting and hard to know: Move A to the left and B topples over whilst X, which you did not know existed, falls to the ground.
- Human beings rarely act in predictable ways.
To make sound decisions at pace, you must account for the complexity and humanity of the workplace. Structure – although not bureaucratic process – can be a reliable guide. Intelligence, thoughtfulness, compassion, discipline and a selfless attitude are also crucial to decision-making.
Six imperatives to good decision-making (at pace)
In our work with organisations, teams and individuals, we introduce rigour and structure to amplify the personal assets of good decision-makers (and to moderate less constructive influences).
Blending structure and substance, the six imperatives outlined below can help people across diverse functions explore sound answers to hard questions.
1. Find data in dialogue
Bar charts and spreadsheets are seductive – the solidity of numbers inspires confidence. But statistics are easily bent into a misguided and parochial narrative. Sound decisions emerge from grappling with complexity.
Collect data by listening to people from all quarters, regardless of seniority. Engage in dialogue to strengthen understanding and secure commitment.
2. Point in a better direction
Whilst we encourage a long-term take on value (rather than, say, quick financial returns), with decisions we are wary of over-engineering. When you want to change, what matters most is where you are facing.
Find ways to move out of the rut, turn the corner and point in a new direction. You cannot see or organise yourself around a bright future if everyone is staring the wrong way.
3. Put aside the manager’s ego
With our desk in the corner office comes the right to make decisions, is what culture tells us. Whilst experience, used well, does afford a view of complexity, a corner office is not the centre of the universe.
Be thoughtful as a manager and clear a space for colleagues to own decisions. Diverse perspectives will help improve the quality of decisions, and you’ll also benefit from the team’s enthusiasm for their new work.
4. Accept you will be wrong, in part
In decision-making there is rarely right or wrong. Almost any choice in a complex, human system will yield positive and negative outcomes.
Teams that linger over the perfect decision move slowly or stagnate. Avoid this by building the confidence to experiment, seeing risk as inevitable and by taking visible steps forward.
5. Change your mind
When a decision has been made, we easily become fixated on one direction; we seek and find evidence to support the choice we have made. But in a complex, evolving world all relevant information is never to hand.
As a decision-maker, bring humility to the fore and champion flexibility: to change course is a sign of awareness, judgment and confidence, not an admission of defeat.
6. Question slow decision-making
No decision may be worse than a risky one. It is a commitment to the status quo, the situation that likely is causing problems and from which you hope to escape.
When a decision is not being made, ask why: when teams see they have been stuck in a rut for no good reason – such as lack of confidence, political agendas and the like – they often are inspired to act.
Good decisions made fast
Decisions are gateways to the future, for the organisation, its employees and its other stakeholders. In a complex, fast-moving world, decisions must be both well-judged and fast.
With this in mind, we recommend giving your people a light structure to support decision-making that amplifies their individual leadership assets. By doing so, you’ll help everyone turn a corner and embrace a better future.
