Dealing With Too Few Decision Makers
Introduction: Slow decision-making in a demanding environment is a recipe for extinction. There are a number of factors that contribute to an impaired ability to turn information into action. One impairment stems from having too few decision-makers in the organization, often a rigidly hierarchical one. We’ve all heard about the boss whose attitude sends the message that, “…If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.”
Too often information has to pass through too many people in the chain before it gets to a place where it becomes actionable. A number of things can happen along the way, few of which contribute to good decision-making. Think of each person in the chain as a filter. At each stage, the information is considered and a decision made about the worth of passing it along. Perhaps a gatekeeper fails to appreciate the significance the information has for the company’s strategic intent. Perhaps the gatekeeper simply gives the information a different priority level than it deserves and delays passing it on.
In either case, the information gets lost in the shuffle or simply sits until it becomes stale before being passed on. Think about the way a body’s nervous system works. If the messages from sense organs take too long to get to the brain, the person will be at risk in situations where a quick response is required. The same thing happens in your business.
Another problem with this situation is that there is no adequate feedback loop between the folks sending the information and the thinker(s). For example, what if one of your truck drivers sees a small amount of a competitor’s product in your customer’s storeroom, which had not been there before, when he drops off his delivery? Perhaps the customer doesn’t even sell this product---yet---but the driver thinks it means a competitive foot in the door and a potential change in the way the customer’s doing business.
At the end of his route, he tells the shift supervisor, who may or may not think it important enough to mention to the warehouse manager, who may or may not remember to pass it on to the sales manager. Does the warehouse manager see it as important? Does s/he think the sales manager’s a jerk, and decide, “I’ll let him find out for himself?” You can imagine a number of other scenarios that may occur. In turn, what sense does the driver make of the fact that nothing happens, or that he never hears anything back from any of the decision-makers about his observations?
Eventually, you can imagine the driver not mentioning other, similar observations. Without feedback, the driver (one of this company’s sense receptors) has no way to recalibrate observations, become more discriminating, or learn to shift perspectives in response to different events in the environment. It is more likely that this sense receptor becomes a little less sensitive, becomes numb, eventually shutting down. What happens to a living organism that gradually loses sense receptors? It becomes impaired over time. It is less able to cope.
What Does A Company With Too Few Decision-Makers Look Like? Companies with too few decision-makers are slow to move into action on concerns that are out of the ordinary. Things slow down for the majority, while fires, crises, and screw-ups constantly distract a few key people. Most people shrink their scope to the limited arena where they can exert some control and tend to ignore the rest. They only surface problems when those problems disrupt their personal routines.
By the time problems come to the attention of decision-makers, things have been deteriorating for a while, damage has been done and repair work is often required in addition to a devising solution for the precipitating event.
These companies often have leaders who run around the company frantic and angry. They often can’t understand why people aren’t thinking. The decision-makers ask, rhetorically, why people don’t do what they’re told; why they don’t learn from the past; why the same mistakes keep resurfacing. The CEO often acts like an angry parent of recalcitrant adolescents, and the workers gradually slip into the complimentary posture of petulant children.
So What? This condition fosters a fragmentation of the company’s processes. In some of the companies where I’ve consulted over the past twenty-five years, the boss often gives people the steps that they need to take to fix a problem, but s/he seldom teaches the whys. If people don’t understand the context that shapes the power of a particular solution, it is impossible for them to extrapolate effectively when they face future situations that are similar, but not exact.
Therefore, the company as a whole never gets smarter. Another effect of this type of company is that the few decision-makers are so busy fighting fires that they don’t have the time to think strategically or to maintain a savvy external focus. Finally, these companies tend to lack the imagination that comes from the synergy of multiple points of view.
Diagnosing The Causes Of Too Few Decision-Makers
A Company With Too Few Decision-Makers Indicates:
- The few decision-makers are operating on their deep instinctive knowledge of the business. They haven’t ever put their experience into words that allow them to pass their wisdom on to others.
- The few decision-makers don’t trust the thinking skills of the people in their broader organization.
- The decision-maker is fearful of losing control if s/he isn’t the “go-to” person in all situations.
- The decision-makers don’t see themselves as teachers.
- The decision-makers act as if they were the only ones who truly feel a sense of ownership in the business results and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Other issues that may be operating in your company.
Remedying Problems Caused By Too Few Decision-Makers – Action Steps
- The decision-makers need to institute an effort to draw their people into the thinking activities of the organization. Scenario planning, putting the business idea into a shared story, and instituting a formal process of talking about the work will bounce the company out of this rut.
- The decision-makers need outside coaching to help them address the personal roots of their control issues and their lack of confidence in the thinking of key employees.
- The decision-makers need to evaluate their people. If they are inept they need to be developed or terminated.
- The decision-makers need to employ organizational thinking activities such as red team/blue team, after action reviews, and the like.
- The decision-makers need to hold associates accountable for the quality of their preparation, thinking and decision-making.