Latest insight on decision-making
Most of my clients are busy people. And whilst they might have good intentions around some extra-curricular reading, they don’t always manage to get round to it. So the deal with many of them is that I do the reading, and then share the relevant insight with them. It works for me as I love reading, and despite my constant exhortations to make the time to read (you know who you are…) I know that, for most clients, I can act as a good conduit for the key content from a book that’s relevant to their role.
Which is why I found myself reading during this Christmas break, amongst other books, Ed Smith’s latest book on decision-making, Making Decisions: Putting the human back in the machine. The book is endorsed by Mervyn King, ex-Governor of the Bank of England, and there are indeed some common threads with some of the key takeaways of King’s excellent book Radical Uncertainty, written with John Kay.
I have blogged on decision-making before as it’s such a significant topic for leadership; in this piece I want to add in some more general insight prompted both by Smith’s book, and by some conversations I have been having recently with leaders.
Don’t get too hung up on making the ‘right’ decision. Often there is no one ‘right’ decision. And most of the time it’s impossible to actually tell if you have made the ‘right’ decision, as unfortunately Sliding Doors is not really a thing (much as it made for a great film). And it puts huge pressure on you as a decision-maker. Aim instead for a ‘good’ decision, having followed a rigorous and robust process.
What you can then do is to work hard to ensure that the decision is indeed a good one. Smith recounts some advice that Andrew Strauss gave him many years ago: ‘It’s not just about making the right decision. It’s about making the decision right’. Yes, there is the position you’ve taken/decision you’ve made. There is also then the art of bringing it to life, and working hard to ensure it was indeed a good decision to make. I would of course suggest substituting the word ‘good’ for ‘right’ in Strauss’s advice, but the point stands.
Timing: ‘Any decision is better than not making a decision.’ We will all have heard this at some point. Is it though? This is something I’ve thought about a lot. I have blogged previously about the impact of intuition, and when it can be appropriate to take snap decisions, following your gut, and when you might need to take a bit longer over a decision. https://www.sportandbeyond.co.uk/blog/2020/6/23/decision-making-4-practical-tips-from-cutting-edge-research Smith has a really interesting take on this aspect of timing, based on some work by Jim Collins in his book Great by Choice (2011). Collins found that the answer depended entirely on the nature of the risk under consideration. There is nothing intrinsically good about making a decision quickly or making it slowly. The key question isn’t the time it takes to decide. It’s actually whether the risk level is changing as time ticks by. Collins stated that the question is not ‘Fast decision or slow decision’ as proxies for ‘Decisive or not?’, but ‘How much time before your risk changes? And then make your decision within that time frame.’ Smith concludes that time, therefore, is very relevant to decision-making. It’s not however ‘how much time should we take over this decision’ but instead ‘how much time do we have before it becomes a different kind of decision.’
Space: in order to ascertain the above, we need to give ourselves space. It sounds so obvious doesn’t it but as I often repeat, common sense isn’t always common practice. Be effortful about giving yourself time and space to work out what the risk is. How might it change? And so what time frame you should give yourself for that decision.
Resisting the pull of institutional thinking: a key theme of Smith’s book is how institutions can resist thinking too much like institutions, or, to put it slightly differently, how effectively can human beings resist the slide into bureaucratic inertia. One neat solution posited by Smith is to start with the question: ‘what would you do if you were the sole decision-maker?’ Meaning that you start with what you really think, and only from that position start to build in the organisational compromise. Rather than your starting point being something along the lines of ‘well we know that a and b will be tricky, and we’re unlikely to get c and d through all the decision-making hoops, so how about we start with ‘f’. That way lies compromise that is unlikely to satisfy anyone.
As we move into the start of a new year, keep these pointers in mind to give yourself the best chance of making a high number of good decisions.
For more on this or any aspect of leadership, with a healthy dose of mindset, sport, and I hope usefulness thrown in, do feel free to browse through all the articles in the Huddle, or get in touch with me directly on catherine@sportandbeyond.co.uk.