Rotten Habit #1: your decision-making processes

Over the next six weeks, every Wednesday we’ll reveal one of the hidden factors that could be destroying your culture, and how to fix it. We’re calling it the Rotten Season. (Answers on a postcard as to why.)

The one thing you can guarantee about anything called a ‘decision-making process’ is that no decision will get made. Or at least not made any time soon. We see this sort of torpor all the time in cultures of both large and small firms. It is the death knell of many problem-solving processes. It is also a huge waste of time, money and emotional energy. Bob needs to talk to Angela, who needs to talk to Malcolm, who must consult with Sue, who needs to convene a meeting… 

And there goes 2018.

In the meantime, your competitors have launched new products. Your consumers have moved on. And your staff are wondering what became of their motivation.

Of course, decisions are difficult, and consultation is often necessary. So, how do you create an environment that fosters effective decision-making?

We would argue that good decision-making is what happens when you achieve the right balance between agility and rigour. The job is to work out what the minimum viable action standards are for the decision at hand – and then work to them. The useful word here is ‘really’. Who do we really need to consult? What information do we really need to know? How much time do we really need to do that?

This isn’t easy. In some organisations, agility has the upper hand, and people start saying things like ‘We need to move fast and break things’. You hear this a lot, particularly in tech companies. But break what, exactly? Your product? Your people? Your bank balance? Why is breaking stuff important? (What inner rage are you trying to expel?) Here’s a better idea: move fast and don’t break things.

But in many more organisations, the fear of breaking things drives the entire way of working. For example, many matrix management structures encourage a process whereby multiple stakeholders must be engaged in every stage of every decision. This is often in order to get ‘buy-in’. As a result, ideas can take months or years to get to fruition. If, indeed, they’re not killed by groupthink, smothered by due diligence, or abandoned through failures of will.

The advice, then: re-think your decision-making around a principle of minimum viability. Make liberal use of the word ‘really’. And along the way challenge your own and others’ perceptions of what minimum viability actually is.

In other words, task yourself to move as quickly as you can, but no quicker.

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