Who makes the decision here?

In your professional life, do you have issues with endless meetings without clear results, ambiguous goals, or discussions about the same topics over and over again? All these have one common root cause: poor decision-making. Virtually all organizations suffer from this. Here are three key ingredients for a more “decision-friendly culture” in your company: 

1. Goal. You need an objective to make a decision. Don’t try to make a decision without a clear and agreed objective; you will end up in ambiguity and a re-discussion spiral.
2. Authority. There must be someone who is authorized to make the decision, a decision-maker. Stating the decision rights per job role is by far more important than listing the tasks. Check your job description.
3. Know the effects of not deciding. People invest tremendous efforts into predicting the effects of a decision (see our recent blog on goal-setting) – and lose a lot of time by doing so. Instead, try to understand the impact of delaying or non-deciding, which is by far more destructive.

Start with yourself: What decisions are you going to make today?

This blog is from our Friday noon memo #39. Interested in regular updates? Sign up here.

© Copyright by New Pace Consulting SA, 2010. All rights reserved.