02/23/2024

The Intentional Decision Maker

Organizations can't rely on the same default decision-making habits every day

People make tens of thousands of decisions per day—in fact, a Cornell University study found that up to 300 of those are about food alone. To stay functional and keep moving through life, individuals make most daily decisions automatically, without thinking too much about them.

But when people come together in a business context to make decisions, the process often becomes sticky and dysfunctional. Such dysfunction may take the form of teams stuck in an endless loop, trying to achieve perfect consensus. It may look like over-relying on structural authority (such as rank, title, or tenure) as a proxy for decision-making capability when determining who should lead those activities. Back-channeling, forgetfulness, urgency, miscommunication—there are myriad ways a decision-making process can get stuck, lost or headed in the wrong direction.

Organizations and teams cannot rely on the same default decision-making habits that make individuals more efficient and effective. Doing so only reinforces structural inequities and dysfunction, even if a company is vocally committed to collective transformation (in other words, big ideas such as innovation, trust, agility and empowerment).

Please select this link to read the complete article from Association for Talent Development.