Take decision-making beyond gut level

Be prepared – a favorite motto of the Boy Scouts. Are we prepared for the choices we must make in today’s fast-moving business environment?

Whether it is an organizational or personal question, everyone is required to make decisions with less time to analyze, reflect and respond. Creating priorities is one way to be prepared to make quality decisions. Timing is everything and being prepared is more important than ever for making rapid decisions.

Good decisions help us progress forward to sustainable growth. Bad decisions waste resources and lead to failure. Decision-making models of the past no longer provide the results we need.

The dynamics of decision-making have become more complex for every business, organization or nonprofit. What are the dynamics that affect our decision-making today? A common set of trends include technology, customer demand, information abundance, budget uncertainty, and our ability to adapt to change.

At this time, the economic drivers alone point to a need to revisit our decision-making methods and assess how we might be better equipped to respond in the short and the long term.

Awareness needed to trust the gut

When asked how they make decisions, many leaders say, “I trust my gut reactions.” Our “gut” is influenced in lots of ways every day. How we feel that particular day, relationships with family, co-workers, managers, and other dynamics affect our emotional gut.

We all have biases that are reflected in our decisions. We rely on our past experience, which needs to be balanced with new learning. Personal self-awareness determines how honest we are with ourselves regarding the viability of our decision-making process. The world is too complex to rely solely upon our emotional, gut reactions.

What do today’s successful leaders have in common? They are constantly prepared to make hard decisions quickly. Earlier this year I wrote about the need to gather data in order to better understand your operations and opportunities. I want to build on that recommendation: Prioritization is the next step once you have the data. This means that as a leader you have projects, resources and contingencies prioritized at all times. If your team has a well-thought-out, prioritized list of projects and resources, you can quickly adjust to demands or requests that come your way.

What are the requirements of prioritization? You must be planning and adjusting the plan on a regular basis. Regular basis means any time a change impacts your unit, team, or project. This level of focus on priorities requires carving out time to think through everything you know and anticipate future trends.

Prioritization goes hand-in-hand with gathering meaningful data to strengthen decisions on every level. This decision-making solution suggests that we move beyond gut reaction and past experience-based decisions to a more well-thought-out list of priorities based upon current trends and feedback.

Be prepared with priorities

To be prepared we need to think proactively, tactically, and strategically. Every manager should analyze, assess and adjust priorities continuously. This is a task that should take priority over many other management activities that provide far less value. Failure is the result of bad decisions made quickly without adequate trend analysis.

Bad decisions burn dollars, time and resources. High quality, informed decisions are those that produce sustainable growth and success.

By adjusting management practices to focus on data-gathering and analysis followed by prioritization, successful leaders are making informed decisions that result in a sustainable business environment.

Prioritization allows every leader, in collaboration with the management team, to create a list of alternatives. These alternatives can be scenarios based upon known and unknown variables that confront the organization or business. This proactive view of possible outcomes means that a “best choice” decision can be made. Being prepared allows decisions to be made from a position of strength.

We are evolving from the time when leaders made decisions “from the gut” and the business dealt with the unintended consequences. Today’s successful leaders create a discipline of gathering data, establishing standards for data analysis, and creating priorities that assist the process of constant, unrelenting change. Being prepared moves an organization toward realistic decisions and a more desirable strategic position.

Carve out time each week to review possible scenarios and trends, and then adjust your immediate priorities. Turn the process into a regular discipline. Make this an experiment and see what you and your team discover. Think of yourselves as explorers in the new world.

Shirley Esterly is a master facilitator and systems thinker who works with clients to build sustainable business practices. She can be reached at [email protected].