For Better Decisions Use Decision-Making Rules (Facilitation Friday #18)
Incorporating decision-making rules into meetings you facilitate can enhance the efficiency of the decision-making process and the quality of the decisions made.
Why is it that great discussions don’t always produce great decisions?
One common reason is that individuals making the decision may weigh different factors when it comes time to choose. Effective facilitation can help groups use decision-making rules to avoid that from occurring and often make better decisions more efficiently.
What are decision-making rules?
Think of them as ground rules or shared agreements for how decisions get made. Decision-making rules help:
ensure policy and performance drive decision-making instead of organizational politics or some individuals’ personal or positional power;
provide structure to what could be a more chaotic process, increasing the efficiency of the decision-making process; and
guard against groupthink, implicit bias, or unconscious bias.
Four Common Approaches to Decision-Making Rules
1. Limits or Constraints
“Set limits to force choices.” That’s the sound advice of author Leo Babauta of Zen Habits in his book, The Power of Less. Doing so eliminates many options that might otherwise compete for attention, either in the discussion or decision phase of a meeting.
Limits or constraints in decision-making often take the form of criteria that any option must meet to merit further consideration or be chosen. A few examples:
Any new program must include a value proposition or defining element that clearly distinguishes the offering from those of our most important competitors.
Candidates for job openings must have minimum requirements for education or certification, years of experience, languages spoken, or proficiency with certain software or applications.
Any new program or service must generate a profit or be revenue neutral.
It is easy to imagine how discussions and decisions could go awry in any of these examples if the constraints were absent and individual influence, particularly from those with positional power or rhetorical savvy, instead drove decision-making.
Facilitation should help a group determine in advance the appropriate constraints or limits for whatever decisions they need to make.
2. If/Then
Another option is the If (_____) Then (_____) approach: if (these specified conditions are met), then (these actions automatically occur).
Here’s a practical example: If customer or member feedback (for a product, service, et al) falls below a pre-established threshold then an automatic review occurs. One can imagine how this might help reduce pushback from staff or volunteer leaders for whom a lagging initiative is a personal favorite or pet project.
Similar in spirit is American Society of Association Executives go/no go (green light/red light) approach as described in Focus on What Matters by Mariah Burton Nelson, CAE. It uses pre-established criteria to answer a question that often is politically charged: Shall we launch (or continue) this product?
I use a slight variation of ASAE’s stoplight approach:
Red light: a program is automatically sunset when it meets certain criteria.
Yellow light: a program (or proposed program) is labeled probationary until performance in key areas is improved.
Green light: a new initiative is automatically green-lighted whenever certain criteria are met.
3. Management Matrix
A matrix can help groups efficiently manage the options under consideration using pre-established criteria for evaluation.
A commonly used matrix is the 2x2 matrix assessing desirability and doability. Individuals place each option under consideration in the quadrant that reflects their assessment of it:
low desirability/low doability (should probably skip)
low desirability/high doability (potential low hanging fruit)
high desirability/low doability (plan how to increase doability)
high desirability/high doability (prioritize for near-term action)
Facilitated discussion follows to help participants explore individuals’ assessments and to develop consensus around a queue/plan of action.
A Value or Impact Matrix, another favorite, is a bit more complex. This approach uses a standard matrix to assess the value or impact of existing efforts or the potential value or impact of initiatives under consideration for specific audiences or stakeholder groups.
Rows: List all member, customer, or stakeholder segments.
Columns: List all existing or proposed programs or services to evaluate.
Participants then use a simple scale (low, medium, high; 1-5 with 5 being high; et al) to assess how well each (proposed) program (potentially) delivers value or impact to each stakeholder group.
Anonymously collecting individual rankings in advance allows you to aggregate them and distribute a summary as part of pre-work for a decision-making meeting. Facilitated discussion can then explore the summary rankings and help group members determine their recommendations or decisions.
I initially focus discussion on these two areas:
The overall value each (proposed) program or service delivers to the mix of stakeholders.
The overall value each stakeholder group receives from the mix of existing or proposed programs.
This matrix provides a quick snapshot of (1) which existing or proposed programs are high value propositions and for whom, and (2) the overall value each individual member, customer, or stakeholder segment receives from current efforts or might receive from programs and services under consideration. Participants in these discussions often are surprised by how poorly served an individual segment is or the perceived value of a specific initiative is to certain segments.
4. Enabling Questions
For a variety of reasons, a group may have difficulty making a decision. Effective facilitation can leverage the language of enabling questions to help interrupt potential inaction.
One of my favorites comes from Roger Martin, organizational development thought leader, author, and former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto: “What would have to be true for us to say yes with little or no reservation?”
Facilitating discussion around this well-phrased prompt almost always produces a short list of criteria which groups can then use to evaluate the various options under consideration.
Another enabling question comes from the “white hat” thinking of Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method: what information do we have or need that could help us make a decision? Focusing on helpful information enables groups to move toward a decision by better utilizing existing data or gathering the information needed for a decision.
Bottom-line?
As Valerie Galinskaya from Merrill Lynch notes, “Deciding how to decide is really important.” Groups that don’t—particularly for complex or difficult decisions—can have high quality discussions but might still struggle to make an equitable and desirable choice.
By providing some structure to decision-making through use of decision-making rules or other tools, facilitators help make it easier for high quality decisions to be made more efficiently. Because decision-making rules may be new to those you facilitate, do a mock decision-making process with sample rules before using them to make an actual decision.
Getting in Action
Think of a decision (or type of decision) commonly made in your organization. Drawing on the approaches described in this essay, identify a few decision-making rules that could help increase the efficiency of the decision-making process and/or the quality of the decisions made.
Anticipate possible concerns that meeting participants might raise about using decision-making rules and how you might respond to them in a facilitative manner.
Which of the meetings in which you participate or that you facilitate might benefit most from incorporating decision-making rules? How might you introduce them to participants?
© Facilitate Better and Jeffrey Cufaude. All rights reserved.
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