Management Excellence Toolkit: Part 1-Create a Decision Journal

February 9, 2011 By 3 Comments

Note from Art: Your decisions define you as a leader and a manager, yet we spend very little time in our busy lives finding ways to improve our abilities in this area. This Management Excellence Toolkit Series will help you recognize the challenges and pitfalls of individual and group decision-making and offer ideas on improving performance for you and your co-workers.

Consider:

“Every decision is a risk-taking judgment.” –Peter Drucker

“Making decisions is the most important job of any executive. It’s also the toughest and the riskiest.” –Hammond, Keeney and Raifa in HBR, The Hidden Traps in Decision Making.

How many decisions do you make in a typical week? If you’re like most managers, the answer is: “a bunch.”

Many of our decisions are fairly straightforward. We have policies, procedures and precedent, and the decisions are effectively programmed. No sweat, limited risk and in fact, it’s easy to train others to make these decisions.  It’s when we move outside of the programmed decisions that things get interesting.

The Sticky Decisions that Define Our Careers:

Consider the issue of choosing between multiple candidates for a job or, choosing which projects to invest in and which to place on the shelf.

Compared to the programmed decisions, the way forward for these key decisions is clouded by all sorts of factors: political and business risks, fuzzy information, evaluation errors, biases, opinions, agendas and good old-fashioned ambiguity.

To make matters worse, the effectiveness of the decision is often not visible for some time and even that may prove hard to measure based on the effectiveness of the actions taken to implement the decision.

You Must Develop as an Effective Decision Maker to Climb the Ladder:

As you climb the ladder, the decisions become more ambiguous, more complex and a whole heck of a lot riskier. Of course, you won’t reach the next rung on the ladder unless those who must decide to trust you, develop confidence in your ability to navigate those issues.

Given both the import of decision making on your career, your firm and even your life, it’s important to build decision-making muscle by scrutinizing your processes, your practices and your outcomes. A great place to start is to follow in the footsteps of Da Vinci, Franklin, Jefferson and Drucker (just to name a few) and start a Decision Journal.

Start the Process of Improving Your Decision Making Muscle by Creating a Decision Journal:

First, I’ll tackle the “this is corny” issue. Get over it. Our memories are ridiculously imperfect (a decision making trap!) and it’s critical to capture some key points at the time you make the decision, to be able to effectively scrutinize the effectiveness of the decision some time in the future. Oh, and the list of Hall of Fame Decision Journal Keepers above isn’t too shabby.

Note: this is useful for teams as well, and in project management circles, the use of a decision-log is a good practice.

At Least 12 Items to Capture in Your Decision Journal:

1. Decisions that are more strategic in nature, including hiring, promotions, project choices, investments, competitive moves and anything beyond the programmed level described above.

2. A clear statement of the issue and circumstances surrounding the issue.  A common mistake for individuals and teams occurs in how the issue is framed, and we will want to revisit the statement and circumstances down the road when outcomes become clear.

3. The perceived risks you assessed as part of the decision making process.

4. The information you referenced to support the process.

5. The individuals (and your relationship to them) you called upon for input.

6. The individuals involved in directly making the decision and their opinions.

7. Emotional factors and other pressures (e.g. time) swirling around the issue.

8. The decision choices and how you evaluated them, including your assumptions.

9. A description of the planned process for moving from decision to implementation.

10 The expected outcome of the decision.  What will determine success or failure?

11. How you will monitor the results of the decision.

12. When you expect to reasonably be able to assess the outcome.

And don’t forget to leave a big space for results.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

This might seem like hard work. Well, it is, and there’s some time involved in both recording the information above and importantly, looping back to describe outcomes and assess what you did right or wrong. However, if making good decisions is as important as I described it above (and it is!), how can you afford to not take the time?

How you record or capture is less important than the act of doing it, as long as the information is organized and accessible. We live in a world filled with productivity apps. From my favorite…a Moleskin notebook to various digital tools, including creating a document template to using voice recordings to tools like Evernote, there’s little excuse other than laziness for not doing this.

–

Next Up in this Weekly Series: We’ll begin our exploration of common decision making pitfalls and traps and how to minimize or avoid them. Your assignment in the interim is to start your Decision Journal.

–

About Art Petty: Art coaches high potential professionals and develops and delivers  workshops and programs on leadership, professional development and building high performance teams. Contact Art to discuss your needs for a program or keynote.

And whether you are an experienced leader seeking to revitalize and develop as a professional, or, a new leader looking for guidance on starting up successfully, check out Art’s book with Rich Petro, Practical Lessons in Leadership at Amazon.com.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , ,

Don't Spend Too Much Time with the Wrong People

August 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

choicesThe major “people mistakes” of my career have occurred as a result of investing too much time and effort in trying to change people.

As leaders, we can enable change.  We can help people that want to change.  But trying to change people on our own is ultimately a fool’s errand.

In one case, a talented, but mercurial individual simply flamed out after several years (yes, years) of coaching, training, disciplining, imploring and anything else that I could think of to strengthen his inter-personal skills.  This was no simple inter-personal issue.  He genuinely pissed people off to the boiling point, although it was always carefully wrapped in supporting business priorities.

In another case, I spent another several years (yes there’s that “Y” word again) helping this individual expand her skill-set through job rotation and preaching.  It was never coaching, because she didn’t want any part of it.

She had a fierce sense of entitlement over being in charge of a group based on her seniority, yet to me, her skill-set was too narrow and her impact on others was typically negative.  She showed no signs of leadership or managerial capabilities.  Nonetheless, I counseled, coached and provided developmental experiences.  When I finally had a promotion to offer, I awarded it to the most deserving candidate.  In response to not gaining the promotion, this delightful individual left the company with no indication.  She just never showed up again.  A few weeks later, I was summoned to the CEO’s office where I was presented with a document indicating her lawsuit.  It was dismissed as frivolous.

While two examples don’t make a career, I learned over time how to invest in those that actively pursued change and development over those that felt entitled or simply were discipline problems.

Give me a person that wants to grow, and I’ll move mountains to help him/her advance.  Show me someone that feels entitled to a promotion or, engages in repeated aberrant behavior in spite of feedback and counseling, and I’ll move mountains to move them out.

Invest like crazy in those that want to grow and develop.  Just don’t spend too much time with the wrong people.

Filed Under: Leadership, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

The Triple Threat to Good Decisions: Data, Time and Emotion

July 22, 2010 By 7 Comments

Right or Wrong? There are few situations more challenging to teams than dealing with a tough, emotionally-charged issue and decision-choice while facing significant time pressure and seemingly contradictory data.

If that type of situation sounds uncommon or unrealistic, consider that many firms and management teams make critical priority calls and strategic choices under just such circumstances. The decision to launch Challenger was a prime example, with all three factors playing a huge role in this tragic call.  Countless corporate strategic misfires owe their outcome to this triple-threat of data, time and emotion.

While many situations don’t involve life-safety issues, this triple-threat is something that every manager should be critically sensitive to in their group and strategic decision-making.

Data, Bloody Data

Let’s start here first. We would like to believe that we are making data-driven, fact-based calls on key issues. Unfortunately, the data quality facts don’t back that opinion.

Our firms have invested small fortunes in powerful data warehousing, enterprise management and analytics software programs, yet report after report substantiates that the data in our systems is crap.  It’s poor quality, obsolete and just plain wrong.  (Visit The Data Warehouse Institute for more on this topic.)

Beyond the fatal data quality issues, we struggle with too much information and the very real and challenging issue of how to interpret the data.  Given this challenge, it’s common for individuals and groups to engage in a game of data-roulette, including:

  • Looking for the data that confirms our opinion and then seizing upon this confirmation evidence at the expense of potentially contradictory error.
  • Sampling on the dependent variable instead of the independent variable.  This common logic error has people looking at the wrong issue and improperly attributing cause and effect.
  • Ignoring the data.  Given the volume of data typically just a click away, it’s easy for individuals and groups to quickly become confused or overwhelmed or both.  Another outcome of too much data is analysis paralysis.

Time after Time

Most timelines for business initiatives are contrived, yet many managers and groups allow artificial deadlines to impact the quality of their decisions.  Certainly, we all know that time is money and that windows of opportunity can close, and yet, I wouldn’t let either of those clichés drive me to make a poor quality decision.  I’ll accept that speed of decision-making is important, but only if it is counter-balanced with quality.

Watch Out When Emotions Rule the Day

My favorite, nausea inducing line of all is, “You’ve got to take off your (insert your functional hat) and put on your business hat.”  That invitation to suspend logic, slice your IQ and commonsense in half and make a poor call is often a ploy to both manipulate and to quickly resolve an emotion-laden issue by imploring someone to suspend judgment.

We don’t’ make good decisions under emotional stress, and that goes for relationships and major life events as well as business situations.  Our well documented and well-established fear of change, its’ close cousin, our propensity to pursue something that looks like the status quo, and our over-reliance on gut calls to reduce or avoid conflict and resolve time-pressures and data ambiguity issues all contribute to crappy decision-making.

7 Suggestions to Keep the Triple Headed Monster of Poor Decision-Making Locked Up

I pull no punches on this topic.  As the leader, you are on the hook for teaching your team to make good decisions.  Your firm depends upon it and your career depends upon it.

1. Strive for Crystal Clarity on the Issue! Frame the issue and carefully conduct a process- check to ensure that you are all looking at the same core issue and decision.

2. Hit the Brakes! If time-pressure takes over, it’s your job to hit the brakes!  I’m not certain of attribution, but the phrase: “slow down and think carefully before you do something stupid” jumps to mind here.

3. Hit the Brakes, Part 2: Too many managers are fearful of raising their hands and saying, “hold it.”  As a leader, foster a culture where people don’t get knee-capped for pulling the chain to stop the production line, and as a professional, develop a spine.

4. Just the Facts! Spend time assessing what you know, and very importantly, defining what you still need to know to make a decision.  This last part….”what we need to know,” is often skipped.

5. Turn Data Into Information and Knowledge.  Monitor data integrity and quality, and work with your group to carefully wrap it in meaning. This step is the source of many of the errors described above, so note your assumptions, watch out for framing and confirming evidence errors.  Consider involving objective 3rd parties to help look at and interpret the data and data needs.

6. Recall Drucker’s Saying: “Every Decision is a Risk-Taking Judgment.” Teach your team to think through and prioritize on risks.  Use face-to-face and anonymous input to ensure that risks are identified without the bias of social interaction.

7. Vent the Emotions and Then Move On: De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats does this brilliantly.  Use his process, or, at least create an opportunity for everyone to vent and then challenge them to focus on facts, risks, opportunities and ideas.  (Frankly, Six Thinking Hats process is a tool that has the potential to improve discussion and decision quality.  Consider identifying an experienced facilitator to help you with this process.)

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Time pressures, emotional factors and data issues are at the root of many poor life and business decisions.  High performance teams and effective leaders recognize these factors, talk openly about them when they start to encroach, and work hard at locking them back in their cage when quality of judgment is in danger.  It’s time to slay this triple-threat to effective decision-making in your environment.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Decision-Making, Leadership, Performance, Professional Growth, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , ,

6 Steps for Avoiding Groupthink on Your Team

July 8, 2010 By 7 Comments

clonesGroupthink is one of the nefarious decision-making missteps of teams, and a trap that many smart people and groups have fallen victim to throughout history.

From the classic example cited in nearly every discussion on decision-making, the Kennedy administration’s Bay of Pigs fiasco, to Ford’s launch of the Edsel, to Neviille Chamberlin’s inner circle that believed peace with Hitler was at hand, Groupthink has earned a prominent place in our culture.

And while you might not be planning an invasion or negotiation with evil dictators or planning on launching an ugly automobile, chances are that Groupthink has shown up from time to time in your professional world.

Groupthink at Work in the Workplace:

The essence of this decision-making trap is the irrational pursuit of consensus above all other priorities.  Along the way, those that study group dynamics have identified a number of technical characteristics of Groupthink, including:suppression of reality testing, censorship of doubts, ignoring outside information, overconfidence and an emerging attitude of invulnerability.  While some of these terms have a distinct technical ring to them, they are descriptive enough to suggest a closed, insular and out-of-touch with reality team culture.

I see Groupthink at work regularly on management teams that have convinced themselves that their strategy is the only way forward. They spend months defining a universe that fits their collective frame of reference, and then they build plans to operate in that universe.  While the plans are often elegant, the team’s construct on the external world and clients becomes as much fiction as fact, guaranteeing failure.  After a long period of time invested in framing this strategy, Groupthink’s cousin, Escalation of Commitment, joins the party and together, they work to block out evidence to the contrary and prevent the team from recognizing the need to restart.

Functional groups are prone to a kind of Groupthink, when the organization’s culture and structure emphasizes rigid boundaries and strong penalties for stepping on turf and toes that are not your own.  The isolated group begins to define the internal and external world from its own viewpoint, and almost as a survival strategy, it shuts out external opinion and blocks ideas that are potentially threatening to their view and their silo boundaries.

And perhaps more commonplace, project groups of all types work to believe that achieving consensus is the only way to move forward on an issue. Often, if you peel a layer back on the push towards consensus, it’s driven in large part out of an irrational concern for the feelings of others.  “We want people to feel invested,” or, “I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”  If this were the holiday season, I would offer a distinct, “Humbug!” The pursuit of consensus gives rise to the tyranny of mediocrity.  Or worse.

6 Steps to Avoid Groupthink on Teams:

1. Anticipate Groupthink in your Risk Plan. While it might sound like planning to fail, ignoring the potential for Groupthink is a failure to plan for a very real risk.  And like any risk plan, there must be processes for monitoring and mitigating emerging Groupthink.

2. Size counts. Limit the typical team size to less than 10 and ensure that there are well-defined boundaries for inclusion.  Porous team boundaries and widespread casual involvement on teams breeds dysfunction, including pressure towards consensus for the wrong reasons.

3. Invite external perspectives at various stages of the process.  Of course, you’ve got to have the procedures in place to both protect external viewpoints and to find ways to incorporate them into the group’s thinking and plans.

4. Lengthen the discussion phase…use structured discussion to focus on vetting the issues.  Delay a rush to judgment.  I encourage groups to incorporate non-typical discussion processes such as Six Hats Thinking to dramatically improve discussion quality.

5. Develop a second solution.  I referenced this approach in Practical Lessons in Leadership. Challenge your team to assume that management will reject their first solution.  Develop an alternative and very different second solution and be prepared to defend it.

6. Invite the Devil’s Advocate to the party. While a designated Devil’s Advocate is a contrived role and everyone knows it, at least someone will be throwing rocks at the groups beautiful picture.  Rules on respecting and vetting the DA’s perspective are critical to benefitting from this approach.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Forewarned is forearmed.  Decision-making is tough enough, and it grows in complexity when there are groups involved.  Don’t naively assume that your group of smart people is immune to the many pitfalls and missteps that dot the path towards a decision.  Groupthink is like the common cold, and while there may not be a cure, there sure are some preventative measures that can help keep it at bay.

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Performance, Project Management, Strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

The Words and Decisions of Questionable Leaders

June 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

“That’s an important issue that you’ve raised, and we should talk about it and decide at the right time.”

For this manager, it was never the right time.

“I’m not making a decision until the facts are clear and I’m comfortable.”

The facts were never quite clear enough and she was most definitely never comfortable.

“I don’t care what the competitors are doing, we’re not getting into the low-end of this market.  There’s no margin in it.”

The low end of the market became the market.  This company is gone.

“We’ve stuck with this project too long to back away.”

It’s never too long to back away.  Quit throwing good money after bad.

“The group is convinced that this is the right way to go.”

Beware of groups that are convinced of anything.  They have an annoying habit of talking themselves into bad ideas.

“Because I said so.”

Hey, my parents quit using that one years ago.

–

Recognize that you are measured by the impact of your decisions in the long-term and you are judged by your choice of words every time you open your mouth.

Use Ben Franklin’s method of logging your decisions and tracking and reviewing your results over time.  Identify flaws and shortcomings in your process for evaluating and making decisions and refine your approach.

And remember that in all circumstances your mouth is controlled by your brain.  Use your brain before engaging your mouth.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »