8. October 2022

ABCD Decisions

Great decision making can bring vitalising energy to a transformation. It’s crucial not to treat different decisions with the same approach. A McKinsey & Company article, ‘Untangling Decision Making’ suggests a practical triage:

  1. Big-bet decisions: These shape the future of the company. Regularly reviewing them is key to overcoming cognitive biases. Good practices: appoint a senior executive sponsor, have a clear problem statement, break the problem down and reconnect, have quality dialogues, use devils advocates, run scenarios, etc.

  2. Cross-cutting decisions: These require collaboration across groups, without a single point of decision (e.g. product launch). Good practices: lay out the steps, agree on a clear calendar, cadence, hand-offs, establish a limiting number of governance bodies, create shared objectives/measures, etc.

  3. Delegated decisions: can be handled by individuals or working teams. Best practices: place the responsibility closest to the work for better, more efficient decisions, increasing accountability. Avoid overlapping decision rights, establish an escalation path, don’t let people abdicate.

  4. Ad hoc decisions: worry about these when number 1 to 3 are optimised 🙂

 

How well do you segment and treat decisions accordingly?

The Power of Co-Elevation

In a transformation, it is key to create high-performing teams that cut across reporting line structures. In this context, I very much like Keith Ferrazzi’s

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