Tom Davenport at The Next Big Thing (Harvard Business Online), wrote a great piece on how to improve your decision making process in 2009, and I suggest you give it a read and apply it to your world. You can read the full article here, but here’s a quick overview…
Key Takeaways:
- We made a heck of a lot of bad decisions in 2008 (invested poorly, committed resources in the wrong places, some of our friends turned out to be not so friendly douchebags [my word, not Tom's; think Madoff], and we didn’t prepare for tough times.)
- Take an inventory of key decisions for 2009 (5 key decisions for your financial future, top 20 decisions that need to go well to meet your financial goals, etc.) Without some inventory, all decisions will be treated as equal–which probably means that decisions won’t be addressed at all.
- Classify each major decision by its type (financial, personal, strategic, tactical…) and determine how frequently it recurs, how structured it is, and what information is available to support it.
- Step 1: Define the decision to be made.
- Step 2: Determine method.
- Step 3: Establish governance:
- Level of participation:
- Unilateral
- Consultative
- Majority
- Consensus
- Who is expected to be responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed?
- Level of participation:
- Step 4: Make the decision.
- Step 5: Communicate and implement it.
Tom goes on to fill in details and asks some great questions, so I suggest you read the full deal: The Year Ahead: Make Better Decisions by Tom Davenport
Photo credit: artistsvalley
