You want to make the right quality and timely decisions. You can’t afford to wait and see. So your decisions need to have velocity alongside quality.
I was intrigued to read recently that the Consultants, McKinsey, said that businesses who make decisions well use 3 ingredients. How are you performing in all of the following 3?
McKinsey found first of all that winners use SPEED as part of their process. Those winners will often make a decision with just 80% of the necessary information rather than waiting for it all and possibly lose out to a competitor.
Its sensible here, as the business leader, to identify what decisions ONLY YOU can make and delegate the rest. Make sure your decision process allows you to move good ideas forward quickly.
The second ingredient of decision winners, says McKinsey, is that they favour interaction amongst themselves over the process of deep analysis. Good interaction sparks off great ideas and it also has the extra benefit of heading off biases with the result that everyone is in tune together.
And the third ingredient is to what they call “Choreograph the decision process”. Hey, if you have been to a stage show or even watched Strictly Come Dancing you know how effective and impressive good choreography can be. Without choreography, your decision making could become turgid with countless reviews and approvals. Craft it so the decision process is made in one place.
So that’s a brief look at a key soft skill of decision making. Sharpen your process now and you’ll be more fit to compete for any business opportunity. Are you using all 3 steps?
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