Decision-making is more than “choice”
Job satisfaction is often closely associated with how involved someone is in what happens in the organization. This degree of involvement can even be categorized as being part of the “in group” that drives decisions verses an outsider who can only react to those decisions. Part of this role split extends to those who decide what changes are undertaken and those who will likely resist that change since they are “being changed”. Therefore, there is often a call for deeper involvement from both those who are outside the power structure built around the authority underpinning decision rights and those who worry about low engagement that drives turnover and low productivity. However, giving people a “voice” in decisions has multiple dimensions that are often minimized when advising managers to listen to their employees and communicate more. Such advice implicitly assumes that employees are passive and only involved when invited into the decision process by managers. Such an approach limits a more active role where employees can self-initiate their input which requires a proactive mindset that is not punished by the organization culture. However, before examining this passive versus proactive involvement, there is the issue of “what is decision-making?”
When you get down to it, decision-making is the selection of choices that grow out of an earlier phase of problem analysis where the decision is framed. Further, making a decision choice is worthless without that decision being implemented, often through a change process. When we talk about involvement in decision-making, we really need to widen our view from problem identification through change maintenance. Such involvement can go beyond selling the decision, Level 2 Involvement that is often at the heart of change initiatives. Levels 3 and 4 (testing and consulting) are easy if managers only take a little time to ensure that more diverse viewpoints are considered. Better still would be co-creation (Level 5) that is easy to say, but difficult to put into practice without addressing power and trust issues. Further, across this sequence of events from problem identification to decision choice to change implementation, there are multiple points where passive employees can be invited into the activity as well as where people can self-identify and involve themselves.
Framing the Decision: What Problem?
Even problem-solving requires some breakdown into several tasks. Note that this discussion applies equally to opportunities as well as to problems — just different cost-benefit balances.
Problem identification — someone must name the problem, often by drawing attention to the symptoms impacting the organization. This is where self-initiated action is critical for without someone giving the problem a voice, the underlying problem will likely continue to grow until the symptoms can no longer be ignored by those with positional authority over organization performance. As is often the case, early identification of a growing problem or emerging opportunity provides some time to gain a better understanding of the situation without the pressure of a crisis where the range of available choices may be limited and the costs higher. How the organization culture rewards or punishes employee self-initiative will determine if there is the timely, early identification — or late-stage crisis that can no longer be ignored.
Contextual understanding — through sensemaking, the organization can gain an understanding of the underlying problem that is driving the symptoms that name the problem or opportunity. This happens best when led by those most familiar with the situation and how the situation is impacting customers including internal customer relationships. However, when decision-making is driven by positional power, the decision choice made later often fails to “make sense” to those involved as distance grows between those making the decision (see below) and the people facing the symptoms of the problem. Several organization diagnostic tools are available for examining the problem from different perspectives on how the problem or opportunity is (or can) impacting the organization. Unfortunately, this sensemaking phase of the problem-solving process is too often skipped due to late identification of the problem as discussed above or the organization jumps quickly to the first politically feasible solution (discussed further below).
This is also a place where later success in change implementation is dependent on how all stakeholders are involved. Overlooking input of a key stakeholder here will only postpone when their knowledge of the problem will be revealed later during change implementation. Such a lag in input will not only require additional time later but may doom the change by opening the door again to those who may have a personal agenda that opposes the eventual decision choice. This is also a problematic activity where a limited number of people are involved due to organization power structures and a desire to move quickly thinking only about the first part of the decision-making process while ignoring the required implementation that is to come later.
Most organizations charter a team to lead this activity while involving stakeholders only as needed. Yet, there is an opportunity for proactive involvement for those outside the earlier problem identification. Organizations operate as a Network of Networks where the organization chart is only one network for the formal delegation of authority for decision-making. Tying into this extended network of information flows can range from passive activity in the rumor mill to active sensemaking of what is happening and why. This then becomes a choice — whether to stay connected and self-nominate information needed by others — or wait for problems to occur later during the decision implementation. A side issue may involve how one chooses to brand themselves or to play a toxic game of organization politics.
A thorough problem analysis will surface many options that are available though not all are equally desirable due to cost factors or possibly limited by known organization constraints. With due diligence, the problem-solving phase of decision-making will provide a good selection of options that is driven by the organization diagnostics. In a worst-case scenario, the first feasible solution that is desired by key decision-makers will be presented for a up-down decision that is preordained. Ideally, a slate of options will be developed with sufficient detail for making the choice. The degree that all stakeholders are involved in preparing these option will then determine both the quality of the eventual choice and how well that choice is accepted with commitment or passive-aggressive compliance.
Making the Decision: Choice
While this phase involves making a choice among options, there are several activities that are often overlooked in traditional organizations with tightly controlled delegation of authority for decisions.
Selection criteria — these are the factors that are often hidden but will determine how the choice is made. This step is often glossed over as options are considered and debated. To some extent there is an elimination process that removes an option from further consideration, possibly driven by cost-benefit, feasibility, or resource constraint. Another selection criterion may involve the knowledge necessary to implement the choice if selected. Management textbooks will often include a weighted probability approach that is helpful in clarify the issues but rarely if ever used for making the eventual choice. While such a decision matrix provides a choice ranking based on probabilities and expected outcome values, the value from this process of constructing such a matrix really comes from clarifying the choices with some consideration for risk analysis. Further, because this step is rarely articulated at all, the decision criteria are often in the heads of those directly involved in making the choice thereby muddying the choice with another layer of clouded knowledge on top of factors overlooked by failing to involve the stakeholders directly impacted by the decision. However, proactive involvement is possible through self-nomination of critical factors from their perspective, but also through raising questions that challenge options under consideration.
Who is involved in the decision, moving beyond positional authority alone in making the choice. As mentioned earlier, the traditional organization chart is not related to how work is accomplished but is instead a hierarchy of authority and how the decision-rights associated with that authority are delegated. Such a System of Authority worked in the Industrial Era of relative stability that was periodically disrupted with change. However, use of distributed decision-making is growing with the need for agility and quick responses to changing customer needs and environmental forces for change. These alternate decision processes and how people are involved will be described later.
Making a choice — the selection of the best option available (though subject to review later if new information becomes available). Several approaches are available depending on who is involved and organization values regarding how decision authority is delegated. These will be discussed in the next section.
Implementing the Decision: Change
Any decision made will only achieve its intended outcome if successfully implemented. Because any decision other than one that maintains the status quo will involve change, the third phase of any decision-making requires some consideration of how the decision will be implemented. This opens several choices in change approach and how people will be involved in the change process. The factors that follow are high level issues for consideration and are expanded in a separate chapter.
· Change philosophy — what the organization believes about change and how people process change in their life.
· Organizational change maturity — existing cross-organization change processes and a common language for change.
· Magnitude of the change and who is impacted including their degree of prior involvement in the activities above.
· Progress tracking and when to question the adequacy of earlier steps as new knowledge is learned during the change process.
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Summary
Decision-making can then be seen as much more than just making the choice that will be “the decision”. Without a full analysis, the decision will likely miss the mark and only address symptoms that fail to touch the underlying, core problem. Likewise, a decision is moot without successfully implementing the changes necessary to bring the decision to life. Unaddressed here and discussed elsewhere is how organizational decision-making is increasingly shifting to a team effort where those more knowledgeable and directly impacted by the underlying problem are given the responsibility of leading the decision-making process either through delegation of authority to make the decision or New Era work processes that distributes decision-making with either formal domains for decision rights or principles & guidelines for how decision practices are operationalized.
Reflection
· Are the steps above explicit in practice where you work?
· Which steps are often skipped or given little thought when a decision is made?
· What improvements might be made in how your organization addresses problem-solving?
