Three Decision-Making Tools To Support Your Business

Do you remember when "team gatherings" were an opportunity to ride the elevator? Remember the days you could get together with your coworkers in the lobby to discuss a matter and then take a decision prior to your floor opening?

Okay, maybe you've never been in an elevator, however I'm sure you'll remember a time when making decisions was easy. Most important, those decisions were made quickly, efficiently and efficiently. Going here: FS D8 Dice for details.

Things have changed. It feels like you are continually circling the same pond, making choices that take forever. It's as if you're having the same conversation over and over again. Worse, even when you do finally take the decision, it's a crapshoot as to whether it will be implemented.

There are numerous reasons why businesses that are growing encounter this obstacle of poor and inefficient decisions, and the majority of them have to do with be related to the increasing complexity. But the two most important points to keep in mind arefirstly, that you're not the only one, and secondly, it's crucial to move through this perilous stage quickly and regain your sure-footedness.

These are the three essential steps to assist you in doing that.

1. Be aware that anecdotes don't necessarily equal information.

Anecdote can be used as a proxy for information in small businesses. Anecdote is a good proxy for data. Are you hearing two complaints about one of your products? It's possible there's some quality issue. Do you feel uncomfortable when sales representatives are conversing with a customer on the phone? It's likely that you will need to provide some remedial training.

When your business expands however, as the surroundings become more complex, anecdotes lose its association with data. It stops being anecdotal. It's true that the fact that your sales manager heard two complaints in the past month does not does necessarily mean that you have an issue with your quality. You'll need to collect actual data to find that out.

So it is with every non-trivial decision you now face you need to take time to collect actual data, or you'll make wrong decisions based upon incomplete information.

Start practicing team-based decision-making.

Just as anecdote is no longer a proxy for the data we need in our increasingly complicated business, it is now similarly unlikely that any single individual has all the information necessary to make sound decisions.

Make a plan for making non-trivial decisions; gather the people with the necessary information, authority and knowledge and debate the data and then make an action when you don't have the necessary information.

Data, debate, decide or defer, that's the tempo of high-quality team-based decision-making.

A plan to be accountable.

Previously, making a decision and then implementing it were closely connected. If you took a decision in the morning, chances were it was close to being completed by afternoon. In the present, this is unlikely to happen. Today, each day is similar to New Year's Day full of great resolutions that may or may not get implemented.

In order to fix this, it's important to give implementation as much attention as you give to taking the final decision. After a decision has been taken, you must list the next steps that must be taken along with who and when. Once everyone has agreed to the time of the meeting, make sure that they've actually completed what they said. After that, repeat the process.

The management of a business that is growing is hard enough to manage, so don't make it harder than it should be. It's not possible to teach your children the same tools of parenting you had as a child. Don't attempt to run your business using the same tools you employed to manage it when it was small.