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Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. – Laurence J. Peter
Decisions. We all make them. We may all make them differently. In an earlier post, Anatomy of a Decision, I talked about the different dimensions of a decision. This post will discuss how decisions are made (or not).
First, let’s establish that decisions lie on a spectrum of importance and urgency. There are also personal decisions and business decisions. While it may be useful to think of these as a two by two matrix for each of personal and business decisions, these details are beyond the scope of this post.
What is important to think about is how we make decisions – the process behind this. It is both a personal attribute (everyone makes decisions differently) and personal / corporate critical success factor.
At one extreme Seth Godin encourages people to make decisions – many decisions. The insinuation is that this is not normal behavior for people - that many people don’t make decisions at all, they simply let things happen. Looking at the dimensions of a decision –fill out–
Stepping up from the non-decision are the iPhone/Android apps for helping you make decisions. Simple and intuitive decisions can be made with Hunch. More logical and emotional decisions with Proconlists. the process here is straight-forward. Enter a question and get back an answer to your decision. Whether you are abdicating the decision-making process or adding another decision (whether to trust the app with your decision) is a minor point.
There are many decisions which demand more attention than your smart phone app. These will typically score high on the dimensions of a decision. They can be personal, “should I changes jobs?” or business “should I stop / keep / extend the relationship with our vendor?”.
The Harvard Business Review recently presented a paper by Blenko, Mankins, and Rogers titled “The Decision-Driven Organization“. This article basically outlines how several successful companies structure themselves around the types of strategic decisions that will be made. These decisions are obviously art the furthest end of spectrum on many attributes of a decision.
It is often thought that big decisions need big process to support them. This is not necessarily so. Sometimes speed of decision is more important than the comprehensiveness of a “big process”. Let us be clear though, a process (formal / informal, structured / unstructured, instinctive / thoughtful) exists for all decisions, whether you realize it or not.
Having said this, it is also true what Charlene Li notes in her book Open Leadership, “Inevitably, we base many of our decisions on the thinnest sliver of information and evidence, or even more likely, our gut feeling.” Everyone wants more information to make decisions, and for that information to to be objective and measurable. This is simply doesn’t reflect reality. The process here is “go with your gut.”
How do you make decision? It is worth investing the time to think about this.
Decide well.
