The Manager 150 - Decision Making
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The Manager 150 - Decision Making
Hi
I hope you are doing safe and well. This week has been crazy busy here at lambert towers. I’ve been adding a few more chapters to my book, as well as doing some sorting of the new house.
With most activities in life, they become easier if you are good at making decisions.
Sometimes decisions are easy to make, sometimes you need some more data, sometimes you can get stuck in decision paralysis.
It’s frustrating to work for leaders and managers who can’t or won’t make decisions. It causes confusion, duplicate work and a lack of coherent progress. It’s made worse when people below that leader or manager are making decisions that don’t align to the overall strategy.
I see it often, teams all trucking along but in different directions due to a lack of strategy, decision or guidance from leaders and managers. It becomes even harder to bring people back together and solve that situation if left alone too long.
You’ll never have enough information to make a rock-solid concrete decision – there simply isn’t enough time in a life to take on all potential data points. There will always be a chance that the decisions you make may not be optimal, but it’s usually a good thing to at least decide.
Not deciding, and then directing energy and attention towards your decision, is technically a decision also and it too has consequences.
If you struggle to make decisions consider the following.
Identify what problem you need to solve.
It starts here and this requires leaning into the reality of a situation and gathering suitable objective information.
This requires gathering information, but as Seth Godin points out - more data isn’t always the best way to align around problems https://seths.blog/2021/08/controlling-information/
Gather ideas for how to solve the problem.
The people closest to the work often know how to solve problems tactically but they may lack the wider business context that you, as a manager or leader, may have.
Gather lots of solutions and weigh them all up. Consider what each decision may lead to and what challenges you may face on the implementation path.
Choose a solution.
This is not really a decision right now, merely a choice....so
Outline a plan around the solution.
Actions, goals, responsibilities, measures, ownership, timelines.
Without a plan for implementation you have only made a choice – and a choice is not a decision.
Move with the plan and keep track of it.
Review progress often, communicate widely about it, align everyone around the plan and ensure it’s not yet another initiative that people don’t have time to complete.
Communication is the key to align people, as is bringing everyone together often to review progress
Adapt the plan considering new information.
Change direction if needed but give the plan time to embed.
I see leaders and managers switching directions too soon before they’ve really had time to see results.
Keep giving feedback, praise and attention to the plan and those bringing it about.
And if you work for someone who is unable to make decisions:
Outline the problem
Give them several solutions to choose from
Outline the pros and cons of each solution
Ask them to decide and then help them communicate, implement and keep track of the plan, in a sense co-own the plan with them.
This will help them as they can pick a solution and not feel like they’re the only one bearing the weight of the decision.
The reality is, all work, decisions, mistakes and failures always belong to leaders, but let’s face it, not all leaders are always up to the job, so help them. If you’re confident in the plan and the delivery, then co-owning it is not a bad thing.
Just be sure to review often and change the plan if needed. And be sure to help them communicate the plan up the chain; indecisive leaders often over commit, are influenced too heavily by those removed from the work, and over sell ideas up the chain.
Back to work
One of the continued themes I’m seeing in my consulting and coaching is the delicate act of bringing people back into the office. In some instances it has been mandated, some have grown accustomed to it and are encouraging a partial return, whilst others have simply accepted that work can still get done remotely.
Apparently, one in four firms will continue to allow working from home, whilst Rishi Sunak (UK) is citing evidence that young people will benefit more from being in the office.
It’s a complicated piece of work and there is positive and negative evidence for both remote and in office work. It depends on what you search for. And the concept of mandated return-to-work is moving through the legal system. Can companies legally make people come back to the office?
I like being in the office - I’m missing the buzz of people getting on with work, but I know others are happy to be permanently remote. I just know that the day-long back-to-back video calls are stressful and tiring, and we’re not designed for that kind of work.
Is it a form of managers keeping an eye on people? A fallout from the incessant belief that all work should be collaborated on (i.e. in meetings)? Or simply because people don’t have access to the right information, at the right time, to make decisions?
You know my view - 99% of problems in business are caused by poor communication - so I suspect people simply don’t have the right information to get the job done.
Interesting links
I’m glad research is showing that people are different. It’s great to see science showing how people's brains can be very different - but let’s face it, if we focus on behaviours alone (after all, very few of us in the workplace are qualified to dig into people’s minds), then we see that people aren’t that different. In all my travels around the world, the more people I meet the more I realise we have more in common than we often think. I talk about this and more in my Thrive keynote.
Employers are being encouraged to police out of work behaviour. Torn on this one. On the one hand employees can bring a whole level of drama and legal wrangling to a company, but they are out of work….where do you draw the line?
Are you an over thinker? Seems it’s not that bad after all. Might go away and overthink this one.
Quit Twitter - I pretty much already have.
Leadership is an art form.
Retreat to move forward. I’ve done a little of this recently.
Until next week
Rob...
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