5.3 How do we make decisions?
Have you ever found yourself uttering in mild frustration “who made that decision?” or heard someone else say something similar? In corporate environments (sometimes even in small organisations) understanding how, why and by whom decisions have been made can be tricky. More worryingly, decisions can also be misunderstood: have you experienced a “so-and-so said this” only to speak to the person in question and find their perception entirely different? Or have you been in a situation where no-one seems able to make a decision, enough time passes and there is a general assumption that consensus has been reached and everyone just moves forward. Decision making is hard. And yet, it’s also remarkably easy when done right.
Ask yourself this: how do I make decisions? Your answer will likely be the same as many other people and will probably go something along the lines of looking at the information available, weighing up the impact of any options and picking a path. How you choose that path could vary depending upon the situation, your experience and how much time you have. You could plump for the option that gives you the best outcome, or you could elect to go for the option that minimises your risk. Your reasons will be unique to the situation and will be a risk/benefit calculation that only you understand, but you do will be able to explain it. And your reasoning, whether conscious or not, in some way relate to your personal strategy for life.
Robert Greenleaf, often called the father of the servant leadership movement, said of decision making “on an important decision one rarely has 100% of the information needed for a good decision no matter how much one spends or how long one waits. And, if one waits too long, he has a different problem and has to start all over. This is the terrible dilemma of the hesitant decision maker.” Now ask yourself, how does a team make decisions? The principles are fundamentally the same: weigh up the pros and cons, evaluate against objectives and select the best. But because more people are involved, there are more perceptions of what the outcome should look like, there are more emotional factors involved and everyone has a different context. So decisions become harder.
Except there’s a tool to help make them easier: its called strategy.
Strategy is an over-used, often abused and under appreciated gift. Strategy is big thinking to align derivative smaller thinking more efficiently. The airline Ryanair’s strategy is to offer the cheapest flights. That means that offering freebies to customer to make their lives better only ever happens if it doesn’t impact the cost of flights. Its their strategy. If you fly with Ryanair you shouldn’t expect the greatest service, the comfiest seats or the most added options, but you will be able to fly cheaper than anyone else. If you want extras, you pay for those. But the flights are cheap. If you want to book tickets the app is fast and easy. Because that’s cheaper to run. Big decisions driving small decisions.
In a marketing organisation, if a team doesn’t understand the strategy to a level that is relevant for their role, they won’t be able to apply it. And decisions become harder to ground in what’s right. Strategy can be quite long or quite concise. Brevity is easier to remember and drive adoption but can also be too generalised, detached or non-specific. Marketing strategy can translate into brand strategy, technology strategy, campaign strategy – many other strategies, however, and there should be a clear red thread that runs between them with the big picture influencing the smaller picture.
For cross-functional groups working together, functional strategy needs to be derivative of company strategy, and roles and responsibilities to resolve any ambiguity need to be clear. You may have come across or used models such as RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed), RIDE (Recommend, Inform, Decide, Execute) or McKinsey’s RAPID (Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide) to organise decision responsibility. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, but the benefit of each is that they support creating clarity and standardisation. Everyone knows who is the Decider and who is an input.