Gettting things done: Improving decision-making - Hay Group

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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 2
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
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Gettting things done: Improving decision-making - Hay Group

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