Decision making
By James Jesty, Shape New Ideas
Often innovation stalls because decisions aren’t made, wheels spin on projects, and nothing moves forward. For example, you might need to pull resources on a project that isn’t yielding results, and redirect them to more promising ideas. Or, you might have to make a call to ramp up your efforts behind ideas that have significant potential but there are associated risks.
Every organisation works differently in the way they make decisions, but having a set of decision making principles is a great way to help get past some of these roadblocks.
A big barrier to making decisions is trying to achieve consensus. There is a misconception that consensus means everyone should agree. In their book, How Google Works, Schmidt and Rosenberg make the point that consensus is not about unanimity, but about rallying around a decision that is best for the organisation. They quote General Patton ‘If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.’ Disagreement and debate is healthy, it fosters diversity of opinions, original insights and ideas. But once a decision is made everyone should align and move forward.
