The Decision-Making Style That Keeps Transformation on Track

When we are driving Transformation - the sort of effort where we are changing how people work or their perception of themselves or the world around them - we need to strike a careful balance with decision making if we want to be successful.

Decisions will come along every day. In general we want to push decision making to the lowest level in the program governance structure for velocity and efficiency. Some decisions will be more complicated than others and may require more formality and breadth in the decision-making process. This article explores how to structure those decisions for speed, inclusion and strategic alignment.

We want to bring people along on the journey, so we want to be inclusive. At the same time we want velocity. Velocity tends to imply speed, direction and change, all of which are uncomfortable. So what is the best balance?

We can think of four main decision making styles. No one is "best" in all situations, but, spoiler alert, one of them is likely to be the best for your transformation programs!

Each displays a different mix of speed-of-decision-making, decision quality, inclusion and likely ongoing support for the decision.

For a transformation program we want well-supported decisions if we are to successfully embed the desired outcomes, and we want them in the quickest possible time. It is the trade-off between these dimensions we want to optimize.

Decision-Making Methods

Let's step through each style and examine the characteristics to understand why one style outperforms.

Voting

All parties get to vote on which proposal moves forward.

It is simple to implement, however tends to generate decisions that are "least bad for the most people". This style is poor at creating transformational outcomes and, despite being inclusive, not very good at building lasting support as it tends to generate compromises that no-one likes.

On the surface, it is quite quick, but it tends to generate a lot of reinspection of the options after the decision, so that speed is illusory.

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Dictatorial

The ancient Romans knew what they were doing with this one. The Republic was governed by the Senate, which took too long to make decisions in times of crisis. So in a time of war the Senate deliberately created the post of a Dictator who could single-handedly make the focussed executive decisions needed at such a time.

But we all know how it turned out in the long run.

So too in business and programs. Having a dictator is very quick and very clear. If the person knows what they are doing they may well make excellent decisions that create great outcomes. 

BUT

They usually are not and the program team and stakeholders are, by definition, not being included in the decision. It is more like division making. This fails to create a willingness to change and can even build up active resistance through resentment.

Alec Issigonis, the inventor of the Mini, may be a good example. He was famously unimpressed by committee-based decision making and the quote "a horse is a camel designed by a committee" is sometimes attributed to him.

This is very unfair to camels, I think, as they are very practical and resilient animals. In any case, the Mini was a huge success and remains a functional and design icon today.

His other designs were less commercially successful. Alec was eventually ousted by the senior leadership team for being too independent.

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Consensus

Talk through options until everyone is prepared to agree one. This is like the United Nations. Good if you can get there, but it is slow. Also, if you have significant divergent opinion, you won't get there, so you will be paralyzed.

However, if it is possible to gain consensus then there will be good support for the decision going forward.

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Consultative

This is generally the method of choice for Transformation Programs and is effective in many (most?) business situations.

Even the military, with particular needs for speed and clarity, tend to use a streamlined version of a Consultative process in mission briefings.

It works like this:

The Decision Maker consults the various Stakeholders for input. Correctly identifying those stakeholders is a prerequisite.

Bear in mind that the stakeholders for a specific decision might be a little different to the overall program stakeholders identified in your stakeholder map.

Often, in a program context, the consultation is actually by a Recommender who pulls together options based on objective data. Options are important in a program context as we are operating in an ambiguous space where there is more than one way to the objective.

After consultation, the Decision Maker makes the decision. A skilful decision maker will explain the reasoning, ensuring that the output of the consultation is reflected.

This offers a nice balance of inclusion, examination of alternatives, speed and alignment with strategy.

Key in the articulation of the decision outcome is ensuring that stakeholders whose preferred direction was not chosen feel that their input was heard and considered. This builds much more support and enlistment for the rest of the journey. I show a real-world example below.

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This style is so effective that most program and project management decision-making frameworks recommend it and have systemized it through aides-mémoir such as RAID and RACI

RAID

• Recommender - the person who compiles the options and makes a recommendation on the path forward
• Approver - someone who needs to approve the outcome. Try to not have too many of these as that would muddy who is actually the decision maker.
• Inputter  - someone who needs to give information or opinion pertinent to the decision. It is important to get that right as this is the opportunity to include wide opinion.
• Decision Maker - the person who makes the decision. Boil it down to one, even if this is difficult in a matrixed environment. The clarity that brings will be important for many items such as enlisting leadership support, overcoming resistance and being aligned with strategy. If you can't get down to one DM then try again... you have other problems.

RACI - clarifies roles in Decision Making

• Responsible - the person who has to enact the decision, i.e. do the work. Typically they are orchestrating the gathering of options and the decision-making process
• Accountable - the person who is responsible for the outcome. Often the manager of the Responsible person. The decision maker.
• Consulted - someone who needs to be consulted before making the decision, often a subject matter expert or compliance authority. A stakeholder.
• Informed - someone who needs to be told about the outcome of the decision. A different kind of stakeholder.

RAID and RACI are complementary: RAID helps structure the decision process. RACI clarifies roles and responsibilities.

Real-World Example

In one program I led, an organization had acquired a business with a $1B revenue stream that was driven via partners. It was imperative to implement those partner transactions in the acquiring organization's business processes or face losing the revenue stream.

Simultaneously, the acquiring company was redesigning its overall partner management processes, although this program was at an early stage.

A key concern was the dependency between these two programs. Waiting for the overall partner management redesign would put the $1B revenue at risk. Conversely, moving forward with the acquired partner transaction would store up potential future rework for the partner management redesign program.

The programs were being run in different parts of the organization, so there was no natural singular point of ownership. This challenge in common in large organizations.

I used consultative decision making to

• Gather options
• Demonstrably include stakeholders from the various stakeholder organizations
• Characterize the benefits and risks of each option
• Make a supported decision to move ahead with a singular solution for this partner transaction style even though that would create future redesign work for the overall partner program
• Document and communicate that decision so that it could be included in future communications. This was critical to avoid inevitable future confusion between stakeholders from both programs

Conclusion

• Decision-making structures are key for keeping programs moving, aligned with strategy and building support for embedding the outcomes
• The ability to effectively make decisions links back to other program management activities that should be clarified in early phases, such as Identify. We need to know our overall governance structure and our stakeholders to be effective.
• Different approaches have their merits, but a Consultative approach is going to be the best balance in most circumstances.

If you would like some help in setting up effective decisions for your program then please reach out on LinkedIn or via fieldenablement.com .