Is your team's decision making enabling or disabling company performance
Your company's historical performance is primarily a result of how good you and your team have been at decision making. Strengthening this muscle of decision making will greatly reward you one day at time of deciding to sell your company.
Ask yourself – how good are me and my key leaders when it comes to making timely and effective decisions? Is this a strength of ours or do we have opportunity for improvement? Every hour of every day there are decisions being made in your company, some of them tactical and some of the more impactful and strategic. Decisions being made about products/services you offer, how you price your products/services, scheduling customer order fulfillment, employee matters, vendor activity and the list goes on. Is your team good at making decisions in all these various categories or could any of them use improvement? Here is a list of the most common issues that impede a team's ability to be good at decision making – ask yourself if any of these might be an opportunity for improvement:
- Do any members of my team lack clarity related to what level of empowerment they have in certain decisions I expect them to make? And are they clear on the ownership I give them for making that decision? Employee uncertainty related to what decisions they are empowered to make and/or decisions they are owners of can cause inefficiencies and frustration.
- What decisions being made in my company require two or more people to be involved? And for those that do require multiple people, is this optimal for us? Too many cooks in the kitchen cause frustration, lack of decision ownership and will definitely delay decision making. Certainly, with some decisions you want multiple people involved, but not too many.
- Are members of your team trained and experienced enough to make effective and timely decisions in the areas you’re expecting them to do so? Don’t assume people are confident in the decisions you’re asking them to make. Determine if further training and development could enable them and therefore enable your company.
- Does your team have a good feedback loop on some of the more important decisions being made so the team learns from prior decisions? Looking back on certain decisions and asking what about that decision did we do well and not well in making it and what did we learn that we can apply to future decisions is a powerful step for building this muscle.
- Are the decisions my team is making being made to the desired timeline of the “customer”? Don’t assume that just because a decision is getting made that it is also being made in a timely manner to what the internal or external customer needs. It’s common to hear the comment that the decision was finally made, but it was needed sooner.
Don’t assume that the decision-making muscle at your company is helping to build short and long term company worth. Sit with your leadership team and discuss where improvements could be made related to decision making efficiency and effectiveness – having this discussion could be a gift to your future self as any improvements made might help you build the worth of your company.
