The Decision Expert Newsletter™ - Volume 1; Issue 2
The Ten "Must Haves" for Consistently Making Good Team Decisions
10. Making use of all available information
In a decision with five alternative courses of action, eight
discriminating criteria and seven team members, there can be as many as 280
(5x8x7) pieces of information to manage and fuse. Often decision makers ignore
or discount some of this information due to the shear volume of it or
personality interactions or different perceptions about what is important.
9. Getting decision buy-in and accountability
Accountability and buy-in is born from collaboration.
Collaboration focuses primarily on information sharing and joint fact-finding.
You know you have collaboration when:
- Everyone can paraphrase the issue to show that s/he
understands it.
- Everyone has a chance to contribute to the solution
of the problem. This includes being a part of refining the issue, developing
alternative solutions, building criteria, or contributing evaluation
information.
- Everyone has had a chance to describe what is
important to him or her.
Those who do not agree with the final decision will more likely support the team because they have been included in the decision-making process, and appreciate the compromise needed to reach a decision.
8. Developing a robust, discriminating set of criteria
Criteria (i.e. specifications, attributes, requirements) are
the standards against which you evaluate the various features or attributes of
alternatives. All criteria need not be reduced to time, dollars or some
physical attribute as some criteria are hard to measure and evaluation relative
to them will be more "gut feel" than actual measurement. Usually only a few
criteria are used to discriminate amongst the best alternatives. The challenge
is to tease these out the many others that only filter out weaker alternatives.
7. Using success prone practices
Research has found that decision makers use failure prone
practices in two out of every three decisions made. They seem oblivious to the
poor track record of these practices and seldom study their failures. The goal
then is to develop practices that lead to the most robust decisions possible
within the resources and information available.
6. Spending time and money on the right activities
People often spend time and money on the wrong things
— tasks that do not add value to making the best possible decision.
The most important thing when making a decision is not choosing an alternative,
but knowing what to do next to support choosing. Often people do activities
that easy or comfortable rather than activities that will lead to a robust
decision.
5. Understanding what is important and to whom
The inconsistency among the stakeholders about what is
important is a source of disagreement, richness, and frustration in
decision-making. A major consideration in making a robust decision is that each
of these voices is valid and needs to be heard and honored. A robust decision
is one that comes as close as possible to satisfying all of the viewpoints.
4. Managing performance targets and trade-offs
Targets set in criteria are often modified during
deliberation as it is found that they can not all be met. You can mange
trading-off success in one area for compromise in another. In fact, criteria
targets can be set from the beginning that express utility and guide the
trade-offs.
3. Not committing to the first idea
Many so-called decision-making activities are actually
efforts to justify a conclusion, a single alternative, rather than to use
evidence to select the best possible alternative. Decision makers often fail to
see that they are justifying not choosing.
2. Managing uncertainty
Decisions depend on the best estimates of past performance,
assessments of the current situation and visions into the future. Where the
past performance may be known, the current is clouded by its immediacy and the
future is a best guess. The robustness of any decision and the risk incurred in
making that decision is only as good as the estimates on which it is based.
Making estimation even more challenging, virtually all estimates that affect
decisions are uncertain. Uncertainty can not be eliminated, but it can be
managed.
1. Developing a robust decision
A robust decision is the best possible choice, one found by eliminating all the uncertainty possible within available resources, and then choosing an alternative with known and acceptable satisfaction and risk. A robust decision looks good in hindsight.
Problems with decisions need immediate action. Find out how to 'unstick' your company's decision-management process and learn more about how Bayesian Team Support (BTS) and Accord can help you make sense out of difficult decisions.
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