Hi, this is Fiona, Welcome to my newsletter with observations that may change how you think, decide and lead. UPDATE: Learning from last 6 months I am moving the bi-weekly newsletter to a Wednesday. To get is directly please hit the subscribe button. Thanks and enjoy this 4 min read.
I have been rather fascinated across my career in how much rigour goes into deciding things but how relatively little to bringing these things too life.
Like many people working their way up the corporate ladder, I spent many hours, evenings, the odd weekend preparing reports, analysis, slides and Q&A. For the big things there was always another sign-off needed with another version of the same data, slightly corrected. Rooms full of people nodding at a slide they’ve seen 20 times.
I assumed that was just growing up in business, and so I followed suit. I did it well.
I then became an executive and at times I became that leader, asking for that extra data point, or pre-read the back-of- pocket analysis of what it happened the week before.
Yes, you need to be on top of things but how much is too much?
It took me a long time to realise that perhaps, at least in some respects, this was effort was distributed backwards.
Let’s talk about the exhausted organisation
Too many meetings. Too many emails. Too many priorities. Too much change.
It feels like a lot so we look for ways to make work more efficient. Automate more. Measure more. Optimise more. Add another report. Introduce another tool.
But then I look again at the problem.
What if some of our exhaustion isn’t a workload problem at all?
What if it’s a decision problem?
Think about how much organisational energy goes into deciding. The analysis. The pre-read or the pre-meeting before the meeting. The stakeholders who need to be consulted off-line to be onboard. The extra data someone asks for because there’s a gap and nobody wants to make the call that would bridge it.
Then hooray, a decision finally gets made.
And then it’s followed by another deck, another cascade or another meeting. Three months later, half the organisation has interpreted the decision differently, one person is still challenging why it was made, and those people expected to implement it have moved on to the next priority.
Things stall. So, we seek to make another decision.
I’m exaggerating here obviously, but this is happening in many places.
Organisations don’t just have too much work. They have too many decisions that create more work, not less.
We put enormous effort into deciding
One of the things that has always struck me as slightly bizarre is how much effort we put into arriving at a decision compared with how little we put into making sure it can travel.
Ten people spend six weeks deciding. Someone else spends an afternoon designing and communicating it. Then two thousand people are expected to understand what it means and buy-into it enthusiastically.
We optimise the decision-making process – more data, more analysis, more stakeholders – without asking a simpler powerful question: will anyone be able to carry this when it leaves the hands (or mouth) of the person who made it?
Decisions aren’t done once they are made. That is usually the moment the organisation starts digesting it.
People need to understand the what and the why, which often needs you to share how you arrived at it. Particularly when the decision is difficult, people need to decide whether they trust the people asking them to implement it.
When those things aren’t clear, people will seek their own answers. More meetings. More clarification. More interpretation. More checking. More escalation. More work. Or simply let it fizzle out and move on to something else.
Perhaps organisational overload is actually the cost of decisions that didn’t travel well?
More data alone isn’t the answer
When we face uncertainty we often look for more information and data is a real comfort.
But when is it enough?
I’ve watched organisations optimise institutionally, more data, more precision, more metrics. It works for some topics and these get handed to machines. Yet others seem to grow further from the clarity they’re seeking rather than closer to it. There is never a finish-line when you optimise.
There is a point at which another data point doesn’t take you closer to clarity, it is only delaying the judgement that will eventually be needed.
Data is great at telling us what happened but not what matters most. It can’t decide which of our competing interests deserves most consideration. It can’t tell us when a brave yet uncomfortable voice has spotted something everyone else missed. It definitely doesn’t take accountability.
What does this number actually tell us?
What doesn’t it?
Whose perspective isn’t represented here?
What would have to be true for us to be wrong?
What am I prepared to live with as a consequence?
That’s the job of the leader with their judgement. Not judgement instead of data but the judgement that interrogates it and completes it.
The decision doesn’t finish there
My biggest observation over the last 30 years is that we perhaps need to reverse or at least reassess where we put our energy.
Less time searching for the final piece of data that will remove uncertainty. More time interrogating what we already know. Less time seeking consensus. More space for different perspectives before the call and the willingness to get behind decisions once they’re made.
More time making the judgement thoughtful and much more effort making it portable.
· Clear enough to understand.
· Trustworthy enough in its transparency to build belief.
· Authentic enough in its message to survive beyond the person who announced it
· Accessible enough that people can see themselves in it and share with the meaning intact.
That’s what I mean when I say make a decision portable.
It is one of the questions I spent the last year exploring. Not simply how to make better decisions, but how to make decisions other people can actually carry.
So let’s look again at the exhausted organisation
Perhaps the answer isn’t another productivity initiative or indeed a wellness focus.
As a leader before you ask people to work faster, look at the decisions travelling or sitting in your organisation. How many are waiting for one more piece of data? How many have twenty people attached to analysis because nobody wants to own the judgement? How many have technically been made but haven’t landed with those that need to action them?
How many are actually still creating work long after they have been made?
There’s a lot of talk about doing more with less and I support the general idea.
Perhaps we should start somewhere else.
Make fewer decisions, make them better, make them travel further.
As you look again this week, perhaps just notice if this is happening around you, and make a commitment to make your next decision different.
Have a great week.
I think your distinction between making a decision and making it portable is particularly important.
I wonder whether part of the exhaustion also comes from the coordination architecture through which decisions must travel. Even a well-reasoned, clearly communicated decision can lose its intent as it crosses organizational boundaries, responsibilities, and competing priorities.
Perhaps the challenge extends beyond making decisions portable to making the organization capable of carrying them through to their intended effect.
That raises another question: how do we know when a decision has actually achieved what it was meant to accomplish, rather than simply being implemented?
I'm brought in as a freelancer to many companies to work on leadership. Admittedly, my field of endeavour isn't strategy/business development/change management, wherein decision-making architectures and strategies are in play.
However, what you raise - the possibility that positive outcomes on all levels are directly affected by the number of decisions we're forced to make - felt profound. I never hear this spoken about when leaders tell me about their companies' problems. Yes, they speak of flattening the hierarchy or being faster, but that's usually based in operations and not in an actual PHILOSOPHY relate to the COST of a decision.
Very interesting Fiona. And I sense it IS related to my field of relational skill, self-development and how leaders respond to challenge and opportunity. Thank you for the stimulation and insight.