Change and uncertainty are constants today. Making decisions has hence become increasingly complex. How do you establish the right balance between cautiousness and audacity when you lack visibility?
Broaden the scope of your thinking
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Consult with your group and integrate the inputs while keeping in mind that the majority is not always right.
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Reword the issue at stake to enable you to broaden the question and thus visualize alternative solutions.
Aim for everyone’s benefit
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Anticipate the impact of your decisions on the broader environment, e.g. Stakeholders, partners, third-parties, etc.
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Involve as much as possible early on the persons who will be impacted by your decision, to factor in their considerations and constraints.
Limit the risks
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Schedule your decision-making process into different sub-steps to avoid engaging in an irreversible direction and to factor in take only an acceptable level of risk, e.g. Set up a pilot project before developing the project for a full scale roll-out.
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Devise a « plan B », which will be all the more efficient when it has been thought through before the final decision.
Take action
Split a decision that is difficult to make (30 min)
Splitting up a risky decision into several iterations will enable you to gather more information before making the most engaging choices.
Identify a decision that you cannot take because it seems too risky to you. E.g.: Setting up an organizational change, launching a new offer, recruiting a staff member, making an important investment.
What information could you gather to reduce uncertainty? What would comfort you in your choice? What degree of risk are you ready to assume?
What partial decision could you take that would enable you to progress while gaining time to collect information? E.g.: Launch a pilot project, develop a prototype of the offer that could be tested, start with a temporary contract or a freelance assignment…
Is your decision based on objective data? Take a step back (10 min)
Unconscious biases lead us to favor certain information at the expense of others that would be more relevant.
Which option would you spontaneously prefer? Do you give more credit to the data that supports your assumption or do you unconsciously reject what could contradict it? E.g.: The opinion of a detractor that you consider incompetent… maybe simply because he does not agree with you!
Do some recent or outstanding events prompt you to be more receptive to certain information rather than others? E.g.: The recent failure of a change project might lead you to overestimate the potential resistance to a project that is nonetheless promising.
Do you give a disproportionate attention to the opinion of some people who have influence over you? E.g.: A reputed expert in another domain, a hierarchical superior.
Reducing decisions to binary choices can be the source of mistakes.
Identify a decision you must make that is formulated as an alternative. E.g.: Should we invest in this sales support tool for the field sales force or not?
What options would enable you to overcome this binary choice? Should you consider intermediate scenarios? E.g.: Only buy some of the functionality or only equip some of the teams?
Could you envisage radically different solutions? E.g.: Recruit different sales force profiles; prefer online sales or a call center rather than field sales…
Is doing nothing really an option? Probably not…
Practical Tips
> Coping with uncertainty in decision-making
> Understand decision-making pitfalls
Find out more
> Acquire five good reflexes to make more reliable decisions
> Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity Without Getting Complicated
© Managéris