How leaders can unblock the bottlenecks disrupting decision-making 

Your organization is full of people making decisions in pursuit of purpose. To invest or divest, to increase prices or not, to introduce a product, or to pull another. Their decisions collectively determine the success or failure of the organization.   People are complex, as are organizations. And so are teams. Whether a decision is made by consensus, majority vote, or team leader, the process has complexities, which means bottlenecks easily arise.  A 2018 McKinsey survey of 1,200 global business leaders indicated that “inefficient decision-making costs a typical Fortune 500 company 530,000 days of managers’ time each year, equivalent to about $250 million in annual wages.” Translated for your business, almost 20% of any executive’s time can be wasted due to ineffective decision-making.  Compelling decisions  To avoid bottlenecks in decision-making, you need compelling decisions. Ones that the team can see the merit of and will work hard to deliver on. They are driven by a clear vision and purpose and inspire action and confidence in the chosen course of action. Strategic decisions are examples of compelling decisions when a strong process is followed. However, many thousands of decisions made implementing your strategy don’t follow the same process. Teams need to be aware of the quality of their regular pattern of decision-making.  Team connectivity  Teams with well-connected team members make the most compelling decisions. In 1991, researchers distinguished the more observable elements of good team performance, such as communication and feedback, from less observable elements, such as how a team coordinates activities and adapts them. They explain that teams coordinate and adapt by anticipating the future needs and actions of team members and by predicting future levels of demand. To do so, team members “draw from an invisible knowledge base” of how the team functions best.   Research also shows that teams that move from inferred patterns, based on the invisible knowledge base, to a shared mental model of their pattern of decision-making are higher performers.  Team process  The team needs to map its processes to move from an inferred to a shared mental model. Sounds simple, and ultimately, they should be simplified. However, first teams need to go broad and deep so that nothing critical is missed.  Putting a clear process in front of the team, and going broad and deep, it is much easier to identify bottlenecks or elements leading to poor or weak decisions. Decisions that will often result in rework which is another form of bottleneck. Once the process is well understood, it can be pared back to what is essential.  Decision-making  With the weak points identified, teams can improve the quality and speed of decision-making by reviewing decision rights and by designing decision support tools.   For some decisions, the need for consensus or consultation and collaboration may override the need for speed. Others will warrant autocratic decision-makers. Sometimes there will be a need for layers of decision rights, other times these layers can be stripped away.  Decision support tools range from simple decision trees and risk-scoring checklists to advanced data models. Developed by the right people with the right starting point, trialed and refined, the quality of decisions and the reduction in re-work can be profound. As the team gets more comfortable with them, bottlenecks are eliminated and decision flow accelerates.  Harnessing decision flow  CEOs grasp the weight of making the big decisions. CEOs also need to understand the gravity of bottlenecks to the flow of decisions being made implementing them. As well as the impact of bottlenecks on routine team decisions.   Through process mapping, bottlenecks can be identified and concrete, long term solutions can be found to unlock the quality and speed leaders desire.