Designing How to Make Decisions — Decision Canvas a good starting point
At Fingertip we’re intrigued about improving work, leadership, collaboration, and the impact of our decision making. We are a tech company but the core of our customer engaging work is in design — designing models for decision making. Together with our customers, we design how to make decisions.
Ever since the business model canvas boomed its way into organizations and lean thinking became corporate-appropriate, canvas-based templates are here to stay. The playbook -like step by step visual structure a canvas enables makes sure you’re asking the right questions and solving the right problems. The approach can be used for all sorts of problems and solutions functions.
Decision making is a beautiful canvas exercise. Designing how you make decisions is actually at the core of improving the decision making capabilities of an organization, network, team, and individual.
I’ve worked with organizations to design how they make procurement decisions, how project milestones and decision points should be defined, what is a good way for leadership teams to increase collaboration in decisions, or how to design digital decision making flows to really complex or even chaotic situations.
Deciding is so much more than just getting an approval to move forward. I’ve worked with a lot of organizations where frustrated CEO’s try to find ways of raising the understanding, awareness, and accountability of decision making. The biggest value in decision making isn’t in the execution or the actual decision point. It is in everything that happens before. The value creation of decision making happens before the decision made. This is why it is so important to ask questions, it ensures we are solving the right problems — and making the right decisions.
A lot of organizations approach decision making from a governance perspective. Who has the right to decide, typically looking at the use of money and amount of risk, and then defining roles and rules to enforce accountability and mitigate risk.
Let’s have a closer look at an obvious organizational decision, a challenge worthwhile deciding about. The aim is to arrive at a deliberate conclusion or resolution after consideration and following a step-by-step procedure.
Start by describing why a decision is needed. What is the tension and driver for this decision? Is it a problem or an idea-based driver? Define the current state, problem statement, and starting point.
Deadlines & Milestones. Set the cadence for the decision making. When do we need to decide on this, when to execute? Is there a date when to evaluate, both outcome and learning?
People and Roles. Who are the Stakeholders? What are their roles in this decision? RACI is good. Does someone have a Veto? Is a Backup for the Accountable needed? Should a wider group be Consulted or Informed?
Engagement. Collaboration for opinion formulation and commitment building among key stakeholders. Does the decision need and benefit from discussion and collaboration? How and where does it happen? Is should be documented and transparently available for all involved.
Tasks to Execute. What do we do to make it happen? Think along the process, not just the execution of the decision. Assign the tasks, set due dates. Start with a verb. This how you will ensure the progress is visible for all stakeholders.
Decision, the final formulation of the resolution. How to formulate the final decision to follow SMART?
Evaluation & Critical Success Factors. Assess the process quality and the impact? Does the decision have specific objectives?
If you’re working with a service design hat on you may want to ask the following thread of questions, as knowledge workers our main purpose should be to produce decisions for our customers.
- Who in this decision and decision making is your customer? Whom is the decision made for? Create this into a persona, a stereotype of the typical customer and her needs, wishes, worries, and benefits.
- Think about how your customer faces the decision you are making. Where is she coming from, how will she find you. What happens when you contact her. Think of this from your and your customer’s perspective. Where and why will the customer end the collaboration with you? Will she smoothly relocate to some other service, stop altogether or return later?
- The start again, evaluate how you could improve the customer’s decision making experience or even surprise her positively? Be sensitive to the possibilities of disappointment or insecurity.
Focus on how you decide in different settings, situations, scenarios, and share an understanding of where value and risks come from. This can function as a way of introducing new ways of working and developing your organization’s culture.
At Fingertip our mission is to help organizations organize and implement better decisions using state of the art technology and improving the awareness and skills around decision making. We want to impact the world through good decisions.
If you are interested in deeper coaching for your team or organization get in touch with our experts. Our team has done hundreds of workshops with different kinds of organizations looking to tap the potential in their people and decision making.
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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.