Decision-Making Best Practice 16 – Identify the Worst that Could Happen

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StrategyDriven Decision Making ArticleDecisions put individuals and organizations at risk. Leaders feel compelled to make some decisions while others appear to be optional. Regardless of necessity, decision-makers should seek to identify the worst possible outcomes a choice can bring to enable mitigation preparation or to seize upon the opportunity.

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Additional Information

StrategyDriven highly recommends programmatically embedding best and worst case scenario planning within organizational processes. This perspective is expounded upon in the StrategyDriven Strategic Planning article, Planning for the Best and the Worst.

Decision-Making Best Practice 15 – Identify the Unintended Consequences

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StrategyDriven Decision-Making ArticleDecision makers select from an array of choices the course of action their organization will take; voiding several other possible alternatives. Since there is seldom a perfect solution option to resolve any particular issue, some aspects of the problem will remain unaddressed and/or some excessive action taken. Furthermore, it is impossible to consider all circumstantial variables when making any decision. These decision-making process limitations often lead to unintended consequences, some of which may so adversely impact the decision’s outcomes as to render it a failure or significantly diminish its return on investment.

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Recommended Resource – Secrets of Power Problem Solving

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Secrets of Power Problem Solving

by Roger Dawson

About the Reference

Secrets of Power Problem Solving by Roger Dawson provides an insightful examination of the theories and practices associated with decision-making. Throughout his book, Roger challenges commonly held beliefs about the decision-making process and provides actionable methods to effectively address problems of all types… of which he indicates there are only two, people and money issues.

In Secrets of Power Problem Solving, Roger presents methods for answering several key decision-making questions:

  • Does the Problem Deserve a Solution?
  • Is the Problem Real or Imagined?
  • How Quickly Should You Choose?
  • Intuition or Rapid Reasoning?
  • What Makes You a Great Problem Solver?

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Secrets of Power Problem Solving because of its logical, well-structured approach to everyday decision-making that will be of value to new and seasoned professionals. Roger provides immediately implementable methods for effectively dealing with both people and money challenges. Furthermore, each chapter is summarized by a “Key points from this chapter” list that makes periodic review of his book for principles reinforcement easy and fast.

If we had one suggestion to offer it would be that the flow of the book and its recommendations would be more easily synthesized by the reader if an overview of the decision-making process was presented in the beginning of the book. This is a very minor point as a moderately experienced decision-maker can easily follow Roger’s line of thinking throughout the book.

Effective decision-making is both a role and challenge for today’s professionals. Secrets of Power Problem Solving’s methods provide new and seasoned professionals with a collection of decision-making practices that will help them become better decision-makers. Additionally, the recommendations Roger presents throughout his book are very well aligned with StrategyDriven’s decision-making best practices; making Secrets of Power Problem Solving a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Recommended Resource – Judgment Calls

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Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right

by Thomas H. Davenport and Brook Manville

About the Reference

Judgment Calls by Thomas H. Davenport and Brook Manville examines twelve mission critical decisions made by public and private organizations for the key aspects of the decision process employed and analytical approaches used. Through this exploration, Thomas and Brook discuss organizational factors influencing successful decision-making including:

  • Participative Problem-Solving Processes
  • Technology and Analytics
  • Power and Culture
  • Leaders Setting the Right Context

They assert that effective employment of these factors enhances organizational judgment and therefore its decision-making capability. The twelve detailed examples within their book serve as a roadmap for those seeking to further develop their organization’s decision-making ability.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors believe in the inherent value of reading books, such as Judgment Calls, that provide deep insights to the decision-making processes of respected organizations during critical situations. Thomas and Brook obviously had access to the senior leaders at each organization profiled; enabling them to garner the though processes and reasoning behind the decisions being made.

Valuable as it may be, we believe there are flaws in Thomas and Brook’s approach to ascertaining the key factors behind successful decisions. Most prevalent among these flaws is an apparent assumption that successful outcomes were the result of a sound decision-making approach and the correction of the organization’s past decision-making shortfalls; not the result, in part or whole, of good fortune or luck. (Note that Thomas and Brook did examine some failed decisions of examined organizations, however, we found those reviews to be incomplete when compared with StrategyDriven‘s analysis.) We would have liked to have seen additional testing whereby the processes leading to successful decisions were tested against decision-making shortcomings observed in other organizations. In our experience, organizations may experience a series of successful decision outcomes because circumstances that would otherwise challenge their area of vulnerability are not manifest. When such a circumstance does arise, the organization’s decision process fails to recognize or appropriately deal with it leading to an adverse outcome.

StrategyDriven Contributors have studied high-risk decisions – both the successes and the failures – made by organizations such as NASA and nuclear utilities around the world; identifying principles and practices to be embraced and those to be avoided. Indeed, one of our contributors co-authored the standards by which the U.S. nuclear industry processes its high-risk decisions. While we agree with the four organizational factors associated with successful decision-making as outlined in Judgment Calls, we believe there are many others demanding close attention in order to consistently achieve desired outcomes. Our insights to high-risk decision management can be found in StrategyDriven’s Decision-Making topic area.

While we believe the approach taken to draw the conclusions contained within Judgment Calls to be flaw, the book offers otherwise inaccessible insight into the decision-making processes of respected organizations making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Recommended Resource – Advocacy

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Advocacy: Championing Ideas and Influencing Others
by John Daly

About the Reference

Advocacy by John Daly provides actionable methods to effectively market ideas such that they are acted upon by the organization. Too often, worthwhile initiatives are pushed aside because they do not receive the critical level of support needed to move forward – merit and positive cost-benefit alone are not typically enough to ‘sell’ an idea. Rather, reputation, relationships, timing, and persuasive messaging is needed to garner the attention and buy-in necessary to gain action on one’s proposals.

In Advocacy, John reveals a step-by-step framework of activities to build the critical mass intangibles needed to drive organizational action. These immediately implementable actions are supported by highly illustrative examples and tools/templates – everything needed to create and execute a plan to get action on one’s next proposal.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Advocacy because of its immediately implementable methods for effectively dealing with the organizational politics common to all businesses. While meritorious competition between initiatives tends to best serve the organization, reality dictates that politics, power struggles, and positioning often hinder the progression of top ideas in favor of less deserving ones. Thus, Advocacy provides the crucial real-world tools every leader should practice when putting forward proposals; thereby ensuring more equitable treatment of the body of ideas being considered.

If we had one criticism of Advocacy it would be that John’s examples are a bit too numerous and a bit too long. While we believe the illustrations could be more concise, it is usually better to have too much than too little detail and the extra here is not a significant distraction.

Effectively dealing with office politics, power struggles, and positioning is a matter of life in today’s business world. Advocacy‘s positive promotional methods provide a comprehensive, actionable way of dealing with these influencers with the goal of benefiting the organization; making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.