Decision, #7 of 10

#7. Decision-Making

Decision: the Key to Transformation

In his classic work, “Think & Grow Rich“, Napoleon Hill stated that 98% of working people are in the jobs they have through indecision, that is, because they never made the decision about what they wanted to do in their lives in the first place. Indecision explains why many people feel that they have a life purpose, but have no idea what it is: the key to transformation. It is one of the key character traits distinguishing high performers from the vast ranks of the mediocre.

Decision is, by definition, behind every truly great achievement anyone ever makes. Interestingly, the most successful people make decisions quickly and change them slowly. They persist with the decisions they have made. However, failures are very slow to make any decision at all (most never make any), and they change the ones they have made very rapidly indeed. Which description applies to you?

Decision-Making Defined

Decision making is a process of first diverging to explore the possibilities and then converging on a solution(s).

The Latin root of the word decision means “to cut off from all alternatives”. This is what you should do when you decide. Burn your boats and your bridges behind you. Get radical, root out everything but your Definite Chief Aim!

Analyzing Proposals: Six Thinking Hats

The Six Thinking Hats proposal analysis tool invented by Edward de Bono⁴ is particularly useful for evaluating innovative and provocative ideas. While most of our thinking is adversarial, the six thinking hats technique overcomes these difficulties by forcing everyone to think in parallel. As participants wear each hat – red, yellow, black, white,  green or blue – they all must think a certain way at the same time…

Here are some popular Best Practices:

• Strive to reach consensus. Modern corporate mythology has the unique decision maker as hero. We hold to the view that “the many are smarter than the few,” and quickly solicit a broad base of views before reaching any decision. At excellent companies, the role of the manager is that of an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions. Building a consensus sometimes takes longer, but always produces a more committed team and better decisions…

Make Quick Decisions by Establishing Guiding Principles

Companies fast-on-their-feet have demonstrated the ability to sustain surge and velocity and have established sets of guiding principles to help them make quick decisions. Abandoning theoretical and politically correct ‘values’ and bureaucratic procedures in favor of a practical, down-to-earth list of guiding principles will help your company make the decision-making process much faster and at the lower, hands-on, front-line level. Only one question will need to be asked of any proposed course of action: Does it fit our guiding principles?

Tools you can investigate include:

• Selecting the most important changes to make – Pareto Analysis, the 80-20 Rule
• Evaluating the relative importance of different options – Paired Comparison Analysis
• Making a selection when many factors must be taken into account – Grid Analysis
• Weighing the pros and cons of a decision – PMI
• Analyzing the pressures for and against change – Force Field Analysis
• Looking at a decision from all points of view – Six Thinking Hats
• Understanding options better by brainstorming questions – Starbursting.
• Making better group decisions – Stepladder Technique
• Seeing whether a change is worth making – Cost/Benefit Analysis
• Choosing between options by projecting likely outcomes – Decision Trees

Action Plan: Set onto paper your company’s Guiding Principles. Discuss them with the staff who’ll need them, with an eye toward Practicality, Simplicity, Courtesy and Justice.