iStock_000007192634XSmallA Building Better Leaders Briefing:

Your decision-making style and pace directly impact your team’s performance. Wait for perfect clarity before putting your stamp on a key decision and you will have metaphorically held your team hostage.  Jump too fast and make off-the-cuff calls and your errors and reversals will climb.  (A reversal is that decision that countermands an earlier decision that turned out to be wrong.)

Early career professionals often struggle with “fear of the unknown.” They are new and lack a base of experience to draw upon and to help frame situations.  As a result, they often hesitate to make a call, because they are not certain what’s on the other side of their decision.

Experienced professionals tend to have a better understanding of the issues surrounding a decision, but are often fearful of having their name attached to a decision that turns out to be wrong. Instead of putting themselves in what they perceive as harms way, they will hunker down and forestall making a call, much to the chagrin of team members.

And some professionals suffer from “Ready, Fire, Aim” syndrome, where they take pride in making instantaneous battle-field calls.

All of these styles breed inefficiency and dysfunction in the working environment.

Decisions are in large part about managing risk and there are a few simple questions that you can ask and answer to yourself that can help you improve your decision-making effectiveness.

Key Questions to Ask and Answer to Improve Your Decision Making Effectiveness:

  • What is the implication of not making this decision?  Will the lack of a decision hurt the business or strengthen a competitor?  Am I holding a colleague hostage by not making this decision?
  • How time sensitive is the issue?
  • Recognizing that perfect information is rare, do I have a reasonable amount of information to make this decision?
  • What is the benefit of making the decision?  Does this help the business?  Does this enable a colleague or team to proceed?
  • What is the worst-case implication of this decision being wrong?  Is this business threatening?  Job threatening?
  • How can I mitigate the worst-case scenario to resolve this decision-dilemma?  Talk with my boss?  Engage other colleagues or leaders?

In My Experience:

Over my career, I’ve typically found that not making a decision is more damaging than making one with incomplete information.  Experienced decision-makers develop the ability to process the questions above at the right level of detail and at the right pace and determine whether the information is sufficient and the risks manageable.

While our experience can lead to “framing errors,” where we incorrectly assume that we understand the context of the decision, I’ve found that sanity checking my thinking with other trusted advisors….those willing to tell me that I’m nuts, helps as well.

There’s no easy cure for the dysfunctional culture that preaches innovation and risk-taking and then metaphorically shoots those that make decisions that don’t work out as planned, but, you can hedge your risk by involving others.  Develop your answers to the questions above and share these answers with other stakeholders (boss, peers, executives) and get them invested in the issue.  Don’t ask them for a decision…that’s your job, but, you can absolutely inform them of your approach and the risks and benefits and at least gain their acknowledgement if not agreement of your recommendation.

The Bottom-Line:

Work hard to hone your decision-making skills and be sensitive to any tendency to forestall based on fear or to rush based on gut, without having thought through the questions.  It’s a balancing act that requires the development of your decision-making agility.