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Decision-Making Best Practice 17 – Informal Advisors
Decision-making always possesses an element of uncertainty. And as the complexity of a decision increases, so does the risk of miscommunication, execution error, unanticipated conditions, and unintended consequences. StrategyDriven encourages the employment of a devil’s advocate to help mitigate such risks. (See StrategyDriven‘s best practice article – advocatus diaboli, The Devil’s Advocate and listen to the StrategyDriven Podcast – The Devil’s Advocate.) Unfortunately, even the staunchest contrarian may operate from an experience base closely aligned to the decision-making team; limiting the span of his or her challenges. Consequently, another mechanism is needed to provide the decision-maker with the complete set of challenges to his or her choices.
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Conference calls are integral to our way of conducting business. This type of meeting allows geographically separated individuals to readily share information as though they were at the same location. However, this audio-only form of communications presents several unique challenges. Consequently, we recommend several protocols to heighten the effectiveness of conference call communications.
Decisions put individuals and organizations at risk. Leaders feel compelled to make some decisions while others appear to be optional. Regardless of necessity, decision-makers should seek to identify the worst possible outcomes a choice can bring to enable mitigation preparation or to seize upon the opportunity.
Decision makers select from an array of choices the course of action their organization will take; voiding several other possible alternatives. Since there is seldom a perfect solution option to resolve any particular issue, some aspects of the problem will remain unaddressed and/or some excessive action taken. Furthermore, it is impossible to consider all circumstantial variables when making any decision. These decision-making process limitations often lead to unintended consequences, some of which may so adversely impact the decision’s outcomes as to render it a failure or significantly diminish its return on investment.
“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
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