Your decision-making process is slowing you down. Show
Speed is every startup’s biggest competitive advantage. We know that moving at speed is all about making decisions quickly and acting on them – but quick decisions get a bad rap. They’re considered heedless, overly luck-dependent, and almost treasonous by those of us in the data and research domains. Still, effective, quick decision-making is a skill we crave and can increase agility, energy, and momentum within any team. Recent research I’ve conducted with Lynsey Duncan has really helped sharpen our thinking about this process – here, we’ll reveal some of the lessons we learned to help you become a better, faster decision-maker. The challenges of quick decision-makingImproving our decision-making process carries two key challenges. The first is identifying what information to use as inputs to the decision; the second is improving the way our decisions influence outcomes. The intuition, experience, and motivations of the decision-maker are critical inputs to the decision. This may seem counter-intuitive, but they are as important as evidence, facts, and data. Both play their part – it’s a purposeful consideration about how each of these types of information drive you towards making the best decision in the shortest possible time frame. A great decision-making process empowers this.
The second challenge is implementing a feedback loop. Outcomes are important, but it’s difficult to extract valuable learnings from them. We learn far more by studying the decision itself and questioning (independent of the outcome) whether the best decision was made at the time. Luck always plays a role, the question is how big a role. Start with these decision-making principlesThere are a few key points to remember when you have a decision you need to make quickly. First, ask yourself if you’re actually making a decision. Making a decision means choosing from a set of alternative courses of action to address a particular problem or opportunity. Consider these four principles; each one plays an important part in your decision-making process.
A six-stage decision-making processStage 1: Define the dilemmaThe first stage of any decision-making process is to define why you are making a decision. What is the dilemma this decision will address, and what future are you trying to create with this decision? Progress can be slow if the decision-maker lacks a firm grasp on the reason for the decision, i.e. the specific dilemma or problem is not clear or the desired outcome is not well understood. Stage 2: What is your “default decision”?Once you understand the problem you are trying to address, decide what you would choose if you had to make the decision right now, without considering any further evidence. Cassie Kozyrkov, Chief Decision Scientist at Google, calls this the “default decision” and identifies it as the first thing great decision-makers do. The default decision encapsulates what the decision-maker knows right now, introducing the valuable expertise, motivations, experience, and objectives of the decision-maker. It establishes a decision early in the process and becomes a benchmark against which we evaluate new choices. Failing to identify a default decision slows down decision-makers because:
Stage 3: Do you need more evidence?Research has a specific purpose in a decision-making process – its role is to reduce uncertainty and identify meaningful choices.
Decision-makers often slow down at this point because they lack targeted research questions with a specific purpose. There is a risk of getting lost in time-consuming, detailed research that is interesting but not specifically relevant, and just serves to bloat the decision-making process. This stage centers around one important question: what information, if available, would steer you away from your default decision? What would a better option look like? For example, would you make a different choice if you knew development would be quicker, or if you were sure it would deliver better customer retention? These attributes of a better decision can be converted into highly specific research questions (e.g, what features can we develop in less than three months that we are confident will improve customer retention by more than 5%?). Stage 4: Identify your decision choicesFrom the research and insights collected in Stage 3, identify your set of decision choices. Each of these should represent a meaningful candidate for selection – eliminate any choices you are unlikely to select. At this stage, it’s common to slow the process by identifying too many choices, or worse still, attempting to identify all possible choices. It’s easy to feel like the “perfect choice” is still out there or that there are options you may have missed. Of course this is possible, but if you’ve given thoughtful consideration to the dilemma and conducted targeted research, it’s unlikely. Trust the process, and yourself. Stage 5: Make the decisionChoosing between your set of identified options is a case of risk versus reward. For each of the decision choices, what are:
There are two critical outputs of this stage:
You may not have high confidence in these assumptions, risks, and opportunities at this stage, but it’s important to record the understanding at the time the decision was made. Stage 6: Review the decisionThe final stage of an effective, quick decision-making process is developing a constructive, actionable feedback loop. There are two important phases here.
Reviewing the decision independent of the outcome is the critical learning point for improving decision-making skills.
Great outcomes are not always the result of great decisions – to improve as a decision-maker you need to study how your decision-making process influenced that outcome. Becoming a great decision-makerGreat decision-makers move quickly by relying on trends, indicators, and their own experience rather than depending on deep research and first principles every time. They judge themselves on making the best possible decision at the time, rather than focusing only on the outcomes their decisions deliver. These decision-makers focus on many small decisions, experimenting to make sure they’re right more than they’re wrong, and developing processes to course correct and learn when things don’t work out as they expect. The most reliable sign you’ve become a great decision-maker? You’ll be asked to make more and more important decisions within your team and company. At Intercom, the Research, Analytics & Data Science (a.k.a. RAD) function exists to help drive effective, evidence-based decision making. If you’re interested in helping drive the best decisions using research and data science at a fast growing company – we’d love to hear from you.
What actions should be taken during the sixth and final stage of the decisionWhat actions should be taken during the sixth and final stage of the decision-making process? Collect information on how well the decision is working. Compare collected information with specified goals. Use feedback to either continue the decision or go back to the first stage.
What are the 6 steps of the decisionStep 1: Identify the decision. You realize that you need to make a decision. ... . Step 2: Gather relevant information. ... . Step 3: Identify the alternatives. ... . Step 4: Weigh the evidence. ... . Step 5: Choose among alternatives. ... . Step 6: Take action. ... . Step 7: Review your decision & its consequences.. Which of the following is the final step in the decisionThe correct answer is evaluating the decision's effectiveness. The last step in the process of decision-making is Evaluating or Monitoring the decision's effectiveness.
What are the 5 steps in the decisionThe decision-making process allows for the exploration of all alternatives in order to solve a problem, and it ensures that the best solution is found. The decision-making process includes the following steps: define, identify, assess, consider, implement, and evaluate.
|