Career Coach - Decision-making - Decisions, decisions

Decisions, decisions, decisions are part of everyday life but some are easier than others. Career coach Frank Peters explores decision making processes and the importance of reaching a final decision. In the following article, the former US president, Theodore Roosevelt once said in any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The next best thing is the wrong thing and the worst thing you can do is nothing. I love this quote for several reasons. It points out that the worst thing you can do is make no decision at all in business. Millions of decisions are made every day, minor and major easy and difficult decisions. Sometimes millions of dollars or people's jobs may be at stake. Many decisions involve more than one person. Meaning a team, should we assume that if teams make lots of decisions, they're also good at it. I would love to say yes. But in my experience, the answer is no. When I work with the team, we inevitably come across the question of the decision making process within the team. It could be a minor thing. Where shall we go for our next team lunch or a more important issue. What are the core values and principles that lead our daily work as a team? And yes, for some lunch is a major issue too. With most of the teams I work with. I like to do the following exercise. It's quick, insightful and fun and interestingly, it's also a meta exercise. This means the team learns about decision making methods and works on its decision making skills at the same time, how it works. I start by presenting three types of information, three categories of decision making methods, seven types of decision making methods. Seven procon pairs equals one. For each method. The team now has one task to assign each pro con pair to the right method and each method to the right category to give you a better idea of how hard or easy that task is. Here are the categories and methods. I'm talking about categories. 11 person decides two, everybody votes three inclusive methods. One majority vote. The proposal with the most votes is accepted. Two, top down, the leader decides three consensus, everyone must agree otherwise, no decision is made. Four consent. A subgroup of the team comes up with a proposal. The whole team can ask questions or raise concerns the subgroup, revises the proposal and the team votes on whether the revised proposal should be implemented. Five systemic consent. For each proposal, everyone is asked to give their level of resistance. Zero equals no resistance. 10 equals very strong resistance. The proposal with the least resistance is accepted. Six dedicated group. A group of team members is given the task of asking all stakeholders for their perspective and finally decides for the team seven empowered expert, one team member with the relevant experience and expertise gets the job of deciding for the team. The task begins, I write the three categories on a pin board. The methods and procon pairs are written on cards or sticky notes scattered all around the board. Next, I start the timer 10 minutes and the team starts to move the cards before I start the timer. I provide one important hint when you want to make a decision. It's helpful to agree on a decision making method first. Everybody hears my hint but they all forget it within seconds. Maybe because of the time pressure or maybe they think they know better. Sometimes after a minute of chaos, someone will ask if they shouldn't first discuss how they make their decisions. Often this question remains unheard as the team works on the solution. Many decisions are made within the 10 minutes. The way teams move forward varies a lot. Some discuss each card and put it in its place. Only when everyone agrees consensus in other teams. One team member takes the cards and places them without discussion top down. Sometimes there's one team member who says I have an idea. Let me do it. If you disagree. Let me know mixture of empowered expert and consent. Other teams distribute the cards and let each team member decide where to put them. Then the group decides if they want to change anything, mixture of dedicated team and consent. It's in these 10 minutes that the magic happens. The team is working on decision making methods and applying various methods as they do the exercise. Most teams switch from one method to another and back again. Of course, I could just put up a powerpoint slide to explain the different methods and their pros and cons. But that wouldn't have a lasting effect. Participants would forget the information as soon as they left the room, it's much better to experience it. For example, the consensus teams who move a card only when everyone agrees, always run out of time. This is a clear disadvantage of that method. On the other hand, the decisions they do make are robust, other participants experience for themselves that a top down method is fast but also frustrating or they see that an empowered expert must enjoy a high level of trust within the team. After 10 minutes, we look at the results and I provide feedback. Here's where Theodore Roosevelt comes in. It's better to make a wrong decision than no decision because there is no feedback for cards that haven't been assigned. In other words, if you make no decision, you can't learn from it. Most of the time after a second round, the teams are happy with the result and proud of what they've achieved. I love this exercise because people not only experience and learn a lot about decision making in a team, but also learn where there's room for improvement in terms of cooper operation and trust. And I have a better idea of what to work on next.