Improving Decision-Making Processes

The WomenCorporateDirectors Foundation’s Thought Leadership Commission and the KPMG Board Leadership Center issued a report that describes some of the problems that can cause poor decision making and recommends improving decision-making processes.  The report discusses incomplete information, groupthink, overconfidence, and other poor practices as causes of decision-making failures. 

The report presents five decision-making styles (first presented in an article by Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony):

• Visionary,
• Guardian,
• Motivator,
• Flexible, and
• Catalyst.

Each style has its strengths and weaknesses.  I would add that a decision-maker needs to use the right decision-making style for the decision-context that is present (see more about this at this blog post). 

The report also discusses ways to create a more inquisitive, risk-based decision-making process by considering multiple viewpoints, identifying the pros and cons of every alternative, and discussing the associated risks (what could go wrong).  The resulting process will resemble the "discovery decision-making process" described by Paul Nutt.

Finally, the report recommends evaluating the decision-making process, not its outcomes, as a way to identify opportunities for improvement.

HT: ISE Magazine