The decision card
I took some advice from Joe and read through some of my notes from the Invitational Forum on Leadership & Management earlier this summer. Connectivity at the event was spotty, and I know I didn't share as much from there as I should have.
So looking back, I found this gem from Bob Rosen, on deciding how to make a decision. At its very core, a person's leadership, or lack thereof, is defined by the decisions he or she makes. Forget leader, we are all, as people, the sum of our decisions (ok, ok, with some unavoidable genetic stuff thrown in). So the decisions we make--from what to have for breakfast to who to flirt with to who to hire to be your right hand--are important stuff.
When you look at leaders in a hierarchical sense--head of a department, head of an organization, whatever--these people, Rosen says, have four decision cards they can play. From most involved to least involved, these are your four choices when you decide how to make a decision:
1. Make the decision. You're in charge, you make the decision, and tell people to execute it or you do it yourself.
2. You get input from others, including sharing your thoughts with others, and then make the decision. This differs from option 1 because you have opened yourself up to the influence of others.
3. You share and receive input, and the group consensus (or hopefully at least a strong majority) decide on a course of action. (A note on this one, as a hierarchical leader, you have to be careful when and how you share your input. By definition, you have a certain amount of power in this discussion that the others do not have.)
4. Finally, you can delegate the entire decision. This is essentially option 1 and maybe the polar opposite of option 1 combined. You are telling someone or some group that this decision is entirely theirs to make.
That's it. Rosen says every time you make a decision, you have to play one of those cards.
So clearly in an enlightened organization, there is only one good decision-making option, right? Option 3. That's what empowerment and the HR management dogma we've all learned since the 1960s has taught us, right?
Sure. Good luck getting anything done in that organization. The fact is, organization leaders (again, the hierarchical kind here) have to use all four of these cards. What I take away from Rosen's four decision cards is that leaders need to think about the situation and think about which card is the best one to play for the organization. Any leader who relies on any one card too often is probably doing a disservice to his or her organization.
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Comments
The critical part of this as a leader is to set expectations with your team as to the decision making model you are going to use for a particular question and then stick to it.
Some of the biggest hits to staff morale I've seen have come when a decision is presented to staff as a 3 or 4 but then actually gets handled as 2.
Posted by: David Gammel | July 26, 2010 5:20 PM
A good book I've read about timing and approach choices surrounding decision-making is Professor Michael Useem's book, The Go Point. You'll find excerpts on the book's website of the same name.
Posted by: Kristin Clarke | July 27, 2010 12:31 PM
Kristin - thanks for sharing the resource.
David - Help me out a little. I've seen erratic leaders who don't seem to have much rationale for how they go about making decisions, and yeah, that's hard on a staff.
On the flip side, Rosen's descriptions struck me and I wrote the post because I think this needs to be a discipline leaders conscientiously think about, that it's not easy. So when you say "a particular question," by definition you're talking about a question that has unique parameters -- it's particular.
The four cards are the logic, the science if you will, of making the decision. If all we had were the same set of particular questions over and over again, we could use the logic to decide and move on. The art of strong leadership is figuring out or knowing the types of parameters of a particular question that lead you to categorize the decision as one that calls for card 1 (or 2 or 3, etc.) All you can do is try to be consistent in how you assess the questions and then how you respond -- and that's going to be inexact to say the least.
So as a leader making these dozens or hundreds of decisions each day, how can you work to protect morale in the face of at least some inconsistency? I don't have much of an answer, it seems like some of that might fall in to Bill George's True North philosophy -- it's about being open and as transparent as you can be, a responsibility that is just as inherent on the staff as the leader.
Posted by: Scott Briscoe | July 27, 2010 1:12 PM
If you are the CEO, the decision is yours and yours alone. You can play any one of the four cards, but it's still your call if and when to play any of them. And you - and you alone - are answerable to the Board of Directors, regardless of which card you played.
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | July 27, 2010 10:51 PM
Scott, the morale problems don't come from the decision making models themselves, although using 1 exclusively won't encourage initiative among staff, of course.
The leader has to be clear to staff which model they are using. Are they issuing orders? Asking for input before deciding? Delegating completely? Ambiguity here is very counter productive.
And David P.'s point is excellent: the CEO owns the decision no matter how it is made. That's why deciding what decision model to use is a pretty critical decision itself.
Posted by: David Gammel | July 28, 2010 9:46 AM
I agree that it takes all 4 "cards" to be successful. Every decision we come across presents a unique set of challenges. Being a true leader is being a master of your self, and consequently your ability to manage the decision making process within yourself. Being more aware of this only makes you a stronger leader and more able to decide on how to decide first.
If you want to see the result of decision #1 players vs #3 players, look at cars...
The Ferrari was the dream of one person who oversaw its design and construction. It turned out something sleek, unique, very purpose built, but also very expensive to maintain and not very usable in most situations. It's the result of playing card #1.
The Kia Spectra was designed by a committee. It does not have the standout features of the Ferrari but it has been made much more useful, practical, inexpensive, and reliable(ok maybe that one is debatable). It's the result of card #3.
Garry
Posted by: Garry Polmateer | July 28, 2010 10:15 AM
David - thanks, that helps clarify your comment a lot to me, and it's a great addition to the post -- wish I had thought of it. Organizations, like it or not, absolutely must thrive in ambiguity, you really have no choice (it's the change is constant cliche restated). But ambiguous decisions? That spells disaster.
Garry - Love the story -- I need to steer my posts to some stories, because you illustrate an excellent point, and make the post more useful. I was for the most part, focused on the little "d" decision. You turned it into the big "D" decision -- not a judgment on importance, but on scale. I hadn't thought about the four cards in that way, but I do think it can help define things.
Posted by: Scott Briscoe | July 28, 2010 2:01 PM