(This is the first in a weekly series to support leaders and organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Share this with your leadership team or decision-making group to shape the path to better decisions.) Best wishes,  MDB)

A Sound Decision-making Process Is a ‘Life Preserver’
 
This pandemic and the aftermath will likely present a series of challenges. The groups you are a part of (organization, church, nonprofit, neighborhood association, immediate and extended family) will be faced with decisions to navigate unpredictable waves of consequences. You may be able to anticipate some of these decisions. Others may arise quickly and require a quick response.

Whether or not you have a formal, recognized role as a leader, I want you to think like a leader who can support a group to make decisions together with calmness, clarity, and courage. In a crisis, it is possible to be driven by a sense of urgency and ‘drown’ in uncertainty, information overload, analysis paralysis, or tunnel vision.

One person with more calmness can raise a group out of reactivity and panic into clarity with greater capacity. A clear approach to decision-making can be a ‘life preserver’ to save an organization and its stakeholders from the consequences of a rushed, poorly considered decision.
 
The Bottom Line  

In a difficult time, leaders and groups often make serious mistakes when they rush critical decisions without the benefit of diverse, informed perspectives. Different ways of seeing and thinking about the situation are essential to inform and stress-test leadership thinking and judgment. A simple, efficient decision-making process can increase the available IQ and EQ, strengthen the current decision, and build capacity to meet the challenging decision around the next corner.
 
Move With All Deliberate Speed  
 
Excessive speed often ‘kills’ decision quality. First, a group needs to replace jumbled thinking fueled by fear and urgency with an intentional, well-ordered set of steps. Second, the quality of the discussion must rise above low quality argument or win-lose debate. Your leadership team must be able, at a minimum, to have a principled, respectful debate. However, the best practice is to reach for the highest level of discussion and thinking together. This is a dialogue capable of generating shared understanding and consensus support. A dialogue requires participants with the skills to slow down and deepen the communication exchange: LISTENING; REFLECTING; ASKING OPEN QUESTIONS;  and STRAIGHT TALK. To find the ‘gold’ in a difficult decision situation, a group has to ‘mine’ the collective intelligence available from multiple perspectives.
 
Dialogue will never happen unless there is enough psychological safety in the group for everyone to candidly contribute questions, concerns, and ideas. Then, there can be enough shared understanding of the situation, the problem(s) to be solved, and the best available decision option.

You Are Not Ready to Decide, Until You Become Ready

As Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” The first step toward readiness in a critical decision is Scoping. Think of a decision like a plane that will take off and fly. If you don’t want the decision to ‘crash,’ you need to make sure it is ready to ‘take off.’ A pilot walks around the plane and does a 360 degree visual inspection and then follows an orderly checklist to get ready to fly. A leadership group needs to ‘walk around’ the situation and the problem space enough and use a checklist to structure their readiness to decide.

Answer these questions to scope the situation and prepare participants for a ‘walk around’ through a productive, creative discussion of the decision problem and the available options to become ready to ‘solve’ the problem.

• Need and Timing – Why is a decision necessary now? Is there a real urgency with a hard deadline for our response? Is there interim action we can take to buy more time to carefully consider our full response? (Know the drivers and test the level of urgency)
• Knowledge – What do we know to be true about the situation we are in? What additional, relevant information are we missing that could help us make this decision? How do we access credible sources and curate the information effectively for the decision-making group? Have others made decisions like this one so we can learn from their positive and negative experiences? (Facts, informed opinions, and lessons learned provide a firm foundation for a difficult decision). 
• Participants  – Who has the authority to make this decision? Who should make this decision? Who else needs to contribute relevant views, experience, and knowledge? Who needs to be involved to increase the buy-in and support necessary for successful execution? (Some decisions need group consensus. Some should be delegated to people closer to the ‘frontlines.’ Some should be consult-decide, with a leader receiving advice from a group, but ultimatedly’owned’ by one person for accountability. BE CLEAR)
• Assumptions – What is reasonable to assume to be true or likely about the situation we are in?(Uncertainty is part of reality. Acknowledging this helps identify potential risks and opportunities. While assumptions may be necessary, they need to be conscious and measured. Recognition of uncertainty also encourages a healthy degree of humility and flexibility.)
• Risks – What risks are there to consider? Do we have the information we need to characterize these risks? Can we afford to take the time to learn more about the risks? Can we afford not to take the time to do so? (Risk has different ‘faces.’ There is risk in waiting to act and risk if we act now. There are large risks and small risks. There are economic risks, health risks, and technological risks…….)
• Stakeholders – Which groups and individuals will be benefited or burdened by this decision?  Will we have participants in the decision-making process who can knowledgeably speak about the needs and concerns of stakeholders? (Accountability, Credibility, and Trust are all on the line. Failure to respectfully consider stakeholders needs and concerns can damage or destroy confidence in a leader or in the entire organization.)
• Options –  Are there some options that are worth considering to put on an initial list?  Are there options on the list that should be vetted to cross a threshold of legality, affordability, compliance, or feasibility before convening the decision making group? (A preliminary list of likely options can provide a good springboard for group creativity to expand and refine the list. If a decision option is not viable, it can help the group save time to run preliminary ideas past a lawyer, accountant, engineer, IT advisor, etc.)

Words of Wisdom

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. 
Alan Kay  Computer Science Pioneer
 
Isolation is the worst possible counselor.
Miguel de Unamuno  Spanish Philosopher
 
Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much. 
Helen Keller  Social Visionary

Practice Tip

Frame Your Decision Deliberately

The pioneer educator, John Dewey, said “A problem properly stated is half-solved.” Write down and revise the decision as a question to be answered. “Who do we layoff this week to immediately cut 30% from our operating budget?” is a narrow frame. “How do we maintain our financial solvency so we can later resume operations?” is a broader frame. “How do we insure our long-term health and sustainability with our human resource, financial resources, and our strategic partnerships?” is an even broader frame. You may need to frame this as more than one decision. It may be a larger decision that must be chunked down into a series of smaller decisions sequenced in a logical order.

• Reduce Framing Bias   How you pose a question, problem, or decision affects the way see, assess, and respond. Ultimately, the quality of your frame affects the soundness of the decision.  Frames include and exclude experience, values, training, people, options, and relevant information. Consider alternative ways to frame the decision question to consciously choose a frame that is well-focused AND expansive enough to hold all the relevant issues. 
• Get Out of the Either-Or Box  Don’t surrender your creativity before you get started.  In situations of urgency, a common mistake is to plunge in “frame blind” and assume that a difficult decision is an either-or choice between unsatisfactory options. Frame the question to hold a space open for different, better options.
• Engage Multiple Perspectives  Remember that what you see depends upon where you stand, and how you frame the issue and the possible options. The decision making expert and Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman, has an acronym that sums up the findings of neuroscience about the inherent limitations of one person’s perspective, no matter how smart he or she is. W.Y.S.I.A.T.I.  WHAT YOU SEE IS ALL THERE IS!  Recognize that your perspective is inherently subjective and limited. Be willing to become wiser by  SEEING through others eyes and learning.