Gettting things done: Improving decision-making - Hay Group

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Getting things done: Improving decision-making
Delivering strategy or the day-to-day
business of an organisation, requires
executives and managers to come
together to make collective decisions.
We are frequently told just how difficult it is to get decisions
made at the right pace and to the right quality and that the
organisation is ‘too slow’. Worse still, it’s getting the results of
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This failure to get decisions made and enacted effectively is
costly, market opportunities can be missed and the best
employees become frustrated, unproductive or leave. We
believe that the traditional approach to improving decision
making is flawed. It is based on ensuring accountability for
decisions, making sure that everyone understands what decision
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inadequate Sub-heading as cover] it ignores too much of the real political and
cultural backdrop against which decisions are made in
companies. Properly tailored decision-making simulations which
capture this information but include the wider political and
cultural backdrop, have reduced unproductive management time
for several of our FTSE 350 and Fortune 500 clients and improved
their ability to react to events and make decisions accordingly.
There is a huge opportunity for
organisations that can address
this issue to create a real
advantage for themselves, and
make significant strides in
delivering their strategy.
The decision-making problem
Hay Group owns the largest database of management
information in the world, and this gives us unique insights into
how companies are structured, employees are managed and
executives lead. While reducing headcount and removing
management tiers has had a beneficial effect on the ability of
companies to transmit information from one end of the
company to the other, having fewer people, with broader roles
has made decision-making more difficult. Companies have also
responded to greater market complexity by introducing
‘matrix’ 1 management structures and in global organisations
where the responsibilities of local and head-offices are in flux,
an organisation’s ability to make sound decisions has often
deteriorated.

Getting things done: Improving decision-making
The employee perspective
Our data shows that they too are frustrated by the way decisions
are made. This data is taken from our global employee opinion
database (5.5 million participants) and showed that in the UK:
• 55 per cent report that their organisations are unable to
make timely decisions
• 41 per cent say that decisions are not made at the
appropriate level
• 37 per cent believe that their firms cannot respond flexibly
to the changing business environment.
A flawed approach to resolving the problem
The most commonly advocated approach to improving the speed
and quality of decision-making is to do three things:
1. Be clear on who makes the decision, or at what level certain
types of decisions get made (often determined using RACI or
similar methodology).
2. Base the decision on the right information by un-cluttering
the data set.
3. Encourage managers to be decisive and make decisions –
often by providing ‘theory and discussion’ type training
programmes.
Leaving aside the questionable value of class-room based
training it’s clear to anyone actually working in a business that
the traditional approach is flawed because it ignores too much
about what a company is like and how people actually behave.
While the first point is broadly sound: many organisations do
have managers who are too far into the weeds and doing the
jobs of the people reporting into them, or busy strategising when
they ought to be implementing- the other points are less helpful.
Take the second for instance. At first glance, it appears
uncontroversial: a characteristic of a good decision is that it is
based on the right information. But what is right? Our
experience is that organisations and systems are rarely lacking in
data: the issue is whether the data set has been established as fit
for the task, its limitations and assumptions are understood, and
that there is an answer to the question of ‘what is enough?’
Without a shared understanding, people question whether the
information is complete, should be interpreted in another way,
or has been manipulated to suit someone else’s agenda. If any of
these worries are prevalent, decisions are not trusted and are
then often blocked higher or lower down in the organisation. At
the very least, the decision process slows down because
everyone has to have their ‘say’.
Common approaches fail
to address how decisions
really get made in the real world;
against a political and cultural
back-drop which decisionmakers
cannot ignore
The real political and cultural back-drop
Establishing the accountabilities for who makes the decision,
and developing their decision making capability is important,
as is having the right information. But on their own they fail
to tackle the wider issue of why decisions are not made well,
trusted and then executed. In the real world, decisionmaking
does not happen according to a process but takes
place in a political and cultural setting. Examples of things
that de-rail decision-making are:
• Decision-makers come together from different parts of
the company and have different, often competing
agendas. The decision people are being asked to
participate in is not necessarily top of everyone’s
agenda and the differing implications for individuals has
not been discussed or dealt with. The result is that the
decision does not get carried through.
• Many ‘rooms’ make decisions, which are then
sabotaged, slowed down or briefed against by the very
same people who were in the room.
• The culture of the company does not encourage anyone
to take a risk. The apparatus of performance
management, bonus systems and ‘the way things get
done round here’ reinforce a message to ‘carry on as
usual’ much to the frustration of executives who want
to cut through all this organisational clutter to actually
get things done. The executives themselves may be
guilty of reinforcing the risk adverse way of doing
things.
• Decisions requiring cross-party agreement rarely need
to be taken at a time or pace that suits all parties. Being
clear about which types of decisions need to be made
quickly, which need to be socialised and which need to
be ‘brokered’ needs to be bespoke to both the decision
required and the company itself.
• Different parties to the decision don’t really agree what
the decision actually was and why it was made.
Needless to say, a good decision arrived at in this way
will still get mired in the organisation.
Many ‘rooms’ make decisions, which are then sabotaged, slowed down
or briefed against by the very same people who were in the room
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Getting things done: Improving decision-making
The solution: tailored simulation
The problem with traditional process and training type
approaches is that they fail to reflect the unique situation of
individual companies and therefore fail to tackle the problems
outlined in the previous section. We have found that the best way
of tackling this issue is through expert-facilitated simulations:
modelling the real life decisions that need to be improved and
allowing leaders to go through the cycle of events, data and
forums that are typically involved. Only then do they begin to
notice and agree the right conditions for improving the decisionmaking
process and outcomes.
What does this involve?
Understanding the organisational context. The facilitator will
require an overview of the organisation so as to be able to frame
the scenario in the context of the broader business and the
stakeholders to whom the decision-makers are answerable. It is
important that the simulation is run by someone with a good grip
on the company’s overarching strategy and how different parts of
the organisation are tasked to deliver on that strategy.
Select the scenarios. Careful consideration needs to be given to
what real life scenarios are simulated. It is important to model
scenarios on instances that are proving difficult (recognising that
most organisations and systems are good at some decisions) and
that are consequential to the organisation’s purpose, and to
stakeholders requirements. It is helpful if the scenarios selected
can highlight tensions in the organisation’s operating model.
Meet the decision-makers. Real life decision-makers need to be
brought together. The facilitator will need to meet with each
individual beforehand to understand two things: the business
context for their participation in the meeting and the way that
they as an individual think, operate and express themselves.
Run the scenarios. The meeting is run as if it were for real but
with an expert facilitator there ‘pressing the pause button’ to
unpack issues the group have skirted over and ‘pressing the
rewind button’ either to reset the conversation in the context of
post-decision implementation or to ensure that each person in
the room has the same understanding of what another person
has said or recommended. Experience with senior teams here is
vital, as is the ability to rapidly understand how sub-teams get
formed.
The outcome is not simply a RACI style ‘implementation
guide’ determining how to assign responsibilities and
actions to individuals. As we said earlier this process-driven
approach does not work, instead it will:
• describe how the decision-making group or team
behaves, how that compares to more effective
decision-making teams and what to do to improve.
• describe how the group processed the decision and
how that processing can be improved, given your
unique environment and indeed the unique people in
the room. At this stage the issue of ‘sub-teams’ is
often addressed.
• describe the role of individuals in the meeting,
articulating how they best impact on the decision in
the room and therefore can best be ‘used’ when
decisions need to be made in the future. This can
involve developing a common understanding of
which roles are best for people to play given their
unique responsibilities, style and role in the
implementation of the decision.
Export back into the business. The learning from this realtime
simulation, expertly facilitated with an eye to the
dynamics of the decision-making group, can then be
exported into the real environment. From our experience
client’s have seen rapid and dramatic improvements in
their decision-making process with benefits including:
• unproductive management time is often markedly
reduced, with leaders reporting that they now only
go along to meetings “when I’m needed and it
matters”. The number of people involved in a
decision is often fewer than originally thought, and
there’s greater trust and confidence that those
involved will make the right decision.
• key decision processes have been modelled ahead of
time and made better, avoiding some of the fallout
that typically occurs when the existing process goes
awry in real time.
• creation of a ‘fact bible’ – for example, streamlining
of management information and its interpretation.
Provide feedback. The learning from this real-time simulation
needs to be exported into the real environment.
“Our clients have told us that execution improves more
broadly as executives lead their areas with a sharper sense
of how the whole comes together, and that change
programmes are more targeted than they were in the past.”
3

Summary
Executives and managers are spending more and more time coming together to make decisions.
Yet this time is often unproductively used and decisions made fail to get acted on or properly
followed through. Resolving this can produce a real advantage. Common approaches to doing so
are flawed, however, as they ignore the real cultural and political backdrop against which
decisions are made.
Our approach – tailored simulation. It reduces unproductive time, ensures the right number of
people are in the room and increases trust and confidence amongst decision-makers that the
decision will get made and followed through.
End notes
1. Hay Group ‘Managing in the matrix’ and ‘Cracking the matrix code’
Contact your Hay Group team
Matt Crosby
matt.crosby@haygroup.com
+44 (0) 20 7856 7313
Jon Dymond
jon.dymond@haygroup.com
+44 (0) 20 7856 7249
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