Podcast: Effective Decision-making: Leadership Characteristic 7

Every decision comes with an element of risk. It’s a fact that can paralyze a leader who overthinks in their effort to drive that risk to near zero before they act. It’s a common enough phenomenon to have achieved a descriptive phrase: paralysis by analysis.

In this episode of Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement, podcast cohosts Dr. Mohamed Saleh and John Dyer discuss the ingredients of effective decision-making, starting with an acknowledgement that all decisions carry risk. The conversation continues an ongoing discussion into 10 essential leadership characteristics for leading change.

The podcast co-hosts discuss different types of decision-making and the scenarios that drive them. For example, in a crisis, “you want a leader who is willing to make the tough decisions very quickly, maybe even without having all the data,” Dyer suggests. “The decision may not be perfect, but [if] it's at least moving the organization away from whatever crisis that they're having to deal with, then that's a good thing.”

The two continuous improvement experts delve into the need to balance speed and being deliberate when making decisions in a crisis, as well as the skill to know the minimum amount of information needed to make an effective decision.

That said, not everything is a crisis that requires immediate action. Saleh and Dyer discuss fact-gathering decision making, in which the leader gathers as much information as possible from a wide variety of sources before making a decision. They emphasize the importance of direct observation and avoiding the traps of decisions based on emotion or short-term outcomes.

Saleh and Dyer discuss team-based decision-making, in which a diverse team conducts research and makes recommendations to the leader about the decision. The leader provides the guardrails and scope of the challenge and acts as the tollgate.

The podcast hosts emphasize the importance of building the capabilities of the teams to support their greater role in decision-making. The transfer of decision-making power also gives leaders more free time.

 Finally, Saleh and Dyer discuss empowerment decision-making, which Dyer describes as the foundation of lean. With empowered decision-making, when things happen at the process, trained teams of employees closest to the process are empowered to make decisions and act quickly “so that the amount of downtime or the amount of quality rejects or what have you, is minimized,” Dyer says.

The podcast co-hosts close the episode with conversation around the need by leaders for self-reflection and transparency, and learning from failure. They discuss PDCA and decision-making, as well as “sunk cost syndrome.”