Mind the Decision Gaps

  Decision Making   Leadership   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

The challenges many organizations face when making critical decisions can be grouped into four key areas: constrained resources, process and technology gaps, and cultural issues. But these problems can be overcome with an approach that blends the best of individual and group contributions.

This article is adapted from the white paper “Individual vs. Group Decision-Making: Avoid the Pitfalls. Get the Best Results.”

On the surface, decision-making is a simple process. A stimulus creates the need for a decision and a process is used to reach a decision. Stimuli could include a situation, a problem, a challenge, an opportunity, a dilemma, and so on. But the result is singular: a decision. However, decision-making must take into consideration the scarce resources of time, people and expertise and also the elastic resources of data, information, and knowledge.

There are seven steps to virtually all decisions:

1. Plan: What, exactly, is the situation and urgency? (How would I describe the decision that’s needed to my manager? To my staff? To a consultant? To a stakeholder?) What resources do I need to make the decision? What will I need at the end to substantiate my decision?

2. Collect Input: Get, organize and discuss the data and information needed. Generate potential solutions / decisions.

3. Evaluate: Shorten the list of potential …

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