Helping Others Decide
I have written a lot on my blog and other places about how a Tech Leader needs to constantly improve his or her decision making skills. We have to get better at investigating, analyzing, and deciding. The better you are at defining and deciding, the more successful you will be. But what happens when you are not around to make the call? What if you are at a conference or on vacation? What if you have delegated a process or project to others and they need to make good decisions?
Good leaders not only improve their own skills, but they also improve the skills of those around them. Call it coaching, mentoring, or just advising. You need to be assisting others at refining their talents. I wrote about this effort in the January and February issues of AUGIWORLD. You might want to go back and review those articles.
Now I turn to actually helping you to help others. Specifically, how to help others make good decisions. I frame the decisions that you and others need to make into four categories. Not all decisions will easily fall completely in one category, but they will have some identifiable characteristics. These characteristics, when identified, will assist others in making the right call.
Note: This article does not include the first responder types of decisions that you and others may make to just “stop the bleeding.” Acting quickly to avoid additional damage in a tough situation is not really in the scope of this decision making discussion.
Here are the general decision making environments or categories I will discuss:
- Easy and Obvious – often thought of as “no brainers”
- Complicated but Known – many moving parts, but all are evident
- Complex and Unknowns – many undefined areas that are unpredictable
- Chaotic and Unknowable – many decisions to make; no facts; no time to think
Easy and Obvious Decisions
Starting with the easiest, you may think that there is little to say about it. When problems or decisions arise that appear to have a solution that is obvious to all, what more can be said? Decisions in this environment usually rise out of past decisions, best practices, policies, and defined procedures. We have been here before; we just need to do what we always do. Most times that is a good route to take, but sometimes it is not. Here are a few things a leader can bring to bear on even the most obvious decisions.
Pass it to Others. Easy and obvious are the best decisions to pass on to those you are leading so they can practice the decision-making tools you are nurturing. Too often I find myself blurting out the answer, when I should have paused and asked, “What do you think we should do?” The simple process of allowing others to decide encourages proactive thinking and accountability.
Pause and Think. Make sure that the obvious is actually the best. With clear cause and effect connections, the easy decision is arrived at quickly. The most obvious decisions are sometimes not the best. They may be quick and clean and effective, but may lack the longer reaching thought that tougher questions cause us to stop, analyze, and develop options. When others come up with a quick answer, help them pause, think a little more, and then act. Sometimes a good decision can derail a best decision if it is arrived at too soon.
Avoid Complacency. Don’t just do things the same way all the time. Don’t fail to look at an issue and derive new perspectives. Don’t fall into the trap of “we have always done it that way.” Even though others may have heard this kind of speech before, you need to remind them if you see a pattern of easy answers. The simple can quickly devolve into chaos if the wrong decision is applied too quickly.
Build on it. What can be connected with this decision to make it better? With obvious choices laid out in front of those you lead, they might want to just decide and then stop thinking. They need to ponder what might naturally be connected to the decision to capitalize on the momentum. Connect a maintenance call to a discussion of legacy hardware. Link a project archiving choice to a review of new cloud-based tools for document storage. By connecting a new conversation to a good decision, people are more likely to want to travel the path toward better solutions.
Complicated Decisions
Complicated contexts contain multiple options or answers that are not obvious, at least not to everyone. There are still cause and effect trails to go down, with analysis being critical to making the right choices. Most components are knowable, either obviously or after research. Most people can recognize problems or deviations from what they normally see, but often experts are needed to uncover root causes. Someone has been there before, but it may not be someone on your team. Framing these decisions for those you lead may include the following.
More Than One Right Answer. Several options may present themselves after people have collected and analyzed the situation. No single answer may rise to the top. If the decider thinks they have found only one answer and they stand alone among others who are looking at the same data and options, then they need to keep looking.
Encourage Interaction with Experts. You should increase the level of interaction with experts when things are complicated. Areas of concern may be swept away when there are conversations with those who have been down this road before. They may also uncover areas of focus that were not indicated by the obvious. Things are complicated, but someone knows more about these areas and should be tapped into. It might be a vendor, a colleague, or even a competitor, but they need to be involved on some level. Hiring consultants might even be an option.
Weight Watchers (on the Org Chart). Not all input is the same. When panels or teams are convened, not every voice carries the same weight. Those higher up the org chart might have more political understanding of clout, but they may not be subject matter experts any longer. Authority does not equate to expertise. Encourage the decision maker to analyze input based on facts and let politics be taken into account during the processes, but not drive the outcome. Let the technical voices weigh heavier on technical issues, but do not overlook the cultural impact of any decision.
Pose More Questions. Validate the findings of a team, per person, by asking them how they arrived at an answer. You are trying to uncover incomplete research and not necessarily challenge the findings. You might ask if they have looked into a specific area, or talked to a particular person. You are probing to encourage deeper investigation and analysis.
Avoid Easy Answers. Complicated environments may have elusive conclusions. When the person is unable to uncover facts or verify assumptions there may be more to the story than what is thought. When deductive reasoning and logic do not unfold as planned, the environment of the decision may be complex rather than complicated. What is the difference? Come back next month to find out.
