By Don Maruska
The following questionnaire measures how well your group or organization approaches important decisions. Read each statement and indicate how true it is for your own team or company, using the following ratings:
0 = never
5 = sometimes
10 = always
Essential Decision-Making Questions
1. Stakeholder Involvement
Question: We involve all people who have a stake in or knowledge about the topic.
Why It Matters: Many groups make a big mistake from the start of problem solving: They leave out people who have knowledge about or a stake in the results. Consequently, their organization loses good ideas, and those people who are left out of the process resist implementing the final decision.
2. Clear Objectives
Question: We expressly state our hopes for the organization and specific hopes for each major project or decision.
Why It Matters: If you aren’t clear about where you want to go, you won’t get there. You need a set of guiding objectives with which participants can align themselves.
3. Understanding Core Issues
Question: We listen to each person's thoughts and feelings about a topic to understand the real issue(s).
Why It Matters: Too many organizations start to solve a problem or decide on a course of action before they understand the real issue(s). Understanding the real issue(s) pays off in greater clarity and a deeper level of buy-in from participants.
4. Option Generation
Question: All the options for a project or decision are put on the table.
Why It Matters: It pays to air all alternatives before leaping to conclusions. This discourages the tendency to settle on preset ideas and enables the group to consider a wide range of solutions, and then drill down to find the best.
5. Information-Based Decision Making
Question: We focus our information gathering on how the options help us realize our hopes.
Why It Matters: By working together to gather information, the group learns as a whole. It also discourages one or two members from gathering only information that supports their viewpoint.
6. Balanced Evaluation
Question: When we review our choices, we listen to everyone's negatives and positives on each option before deciding.
Why It Matters: Ideally, each team member should express something negative and something positive about each option. Allowing participants to choose an option to advocate and then defend leads to ego attachment to an idea and kills effective team decision making in the end.
7. Individual Input
Question: Each person expresses their candid judgment on which choices would best advance the team's hopes.
Why It Matters: What you want is each person’s unbiased view of what would be best for the organization. You don’t want individuals to be pressured to conform or to fear losing face if they change their minds. So consider secret straw ballots to determine how members stand on an option.
8. Consensus Building
Question: We summarize the individual conclusions and identify the most desirable course of action, as well as other acceptable choices.
Why It Matters: Ideally, participants should work together to improve what appear to be the most favored choices, considering elements of other favored choices. It’s unwise to come up with only one solution. Better to identify acceptable alternative solutions and deal with changes that might be needed to improve them, and then select the best among the good ideas.
9. Implementation Monitoring
Question: We monitor whether our decisions are working and promptly modify them as needed.
Why It Matters: It is important to set a specific time frame in which to assess how well your decision is working. Be aware that situations change, and a good decision made previously may no longer be adequate for the current dilemma.
10. Success Recognition
Question:We celebrate the team's progress and the fulfillment of our hopes.
Why It Matters: Celebrate how your choice helped your organization fulfill its objectives.
Takeaways from Decision-Making Questions
- [90 or above]: Outstanding teamwork in decision making
- [60-89]: Strong foundation with room for growth
- [40-59]: Typical score with significant improvement opportunities
- [Below 40]: Underutilizing team talent
Ready to enhance your decision making? Explore Analytical Thinking, Problem Solving & Decision Making to master crucial problem-solving skills.
This article is excerpted, by permission of the publisher, from How Great Decisions Get Made: 10 Easy Steps for Reaching Agreement on Even the Toughest Issues. Copyright 2004, Don Maruska. Published by AMACOM, AMA’s book division.
About the Author(s)
Don Maruska guides Fortune 500 companies, growth businesses, government agencies and communities to solve tough issues through a unique process of decision making. He is also the author of How Great Decisions Get Made: 10 Easy Steps for Reaching Agreement on Even the Toughest Issues. For more information on his work, see his Website: www.donmaruska.com.