Great Decisions Build a Culture of Trust

Research shows the average person makes about 2,000 decisions per hour and 35,000 choices per day (Krockow, 2018).  Decisions are being made every second in your business. The right decisions can boost your stock, while the wrong decisions can assassinate your company and career.  Take Volkswagen for example. Countless managers and executives knew about the emission cheating software and those poor decisions lead to criminal charges, civil penalties, plummeting stock, loss of customers, jobs and more. While sound decisions can amplify a company like McDonald’s breakfast all day, bad decisions can be costly. The closure of iconic Toys R Us provides a different kind of example.  CBS Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger said it best, this is “… a convergence of bad timing and bad decisions” (2018). Retail has been redefined and the business landscape is brutal. A couple of my favorite stores have recently closed or filed bankruptcy, Charming Charlies and Forever 21 (hey, a girl can wish). Headlines reported, “Forever 21 is ‘paying a big price’ for its retail mistakes” (2019). Mistakes and achievements are both a result of your decisions.  Solid consistent decision making builds a culture of trust in organizations. “If people don’t know what to expect from you as a leader, they will stop looking to you for leadership” (Jerry West).  As a professor and business consultant, I teach students and clients about the power of a solid decision making process.  Gareth Jones and Jennifer George provide a six step decision making process that can help you when making those big decisions (2019).

Following is a brief breakdown of each step from my perspective to help reinforce these ideas. Grab a note card and jot down the six steps while you read along.

1. Recognize the need for a decision – Remember no decision is in fact a decision. Businesses today cannot afford to be stagnant.
2. Generate alternatives – Do not succumb to group think, get a diverse group together to brainstorm, the more ideas from various stakeholders the better.
3. Assess the alternatives – If This Then That (IFTTT), do some careful forecasting and review for legal, ethical, economic and practical impact.
4. Choose among the alternatives – Rank the alternatives, identify completeness of information and any potential unintended consequences. This will help alleviate cognitive bias.
5. Implement the chosen alternative – Communicate throughout the enterprise, formalize change management plans, assign roles for implementation and accountability, empower with sufficient resources, and finally take action.
6. Learn from feedback – This is one of the most critical steps to growth, learning and the ability to make necessary tweaks or changes along the way. This step will help you improve on future decisions.
7. Since you are already making thousands of decisions per day go ahead and practice the decision making process until it becomes second nature to you. Improving your ability to make great decisions will help you in both work and life. I titled my business Intent and Impact because I help leaders deliver the IMPACT their intentions deserve; great decisions will do just that!