I recently worked with a Fortune 500 company that was really struggling with bureaucracy.
Year after year, their engagement surveys revealed that the company’s decision making practices were frustrating employees, and even leading some to leave the organization.
Many of those who stayed felt disempowered by how slowly decisions were made and how frequently they were overturned at higher levels.
This is a common frustration in large organizations – but it doesn’t have to be this way!
One of the most foundational and simple practices you can use to prevent this kind of decision dysfunction is to Define the Decision.
It sounds simple, but it’s a frequently skipped step.
Think of it this way: All team projects, from product launches to marketing campaigns to annual strategy, require a ton of decisions.
If you don’t have clarity on exactly which of those decisions is the current focus, you and your teammates will spend meeting after meeting trying to make all those different decisions at once.
This kind of decision dysfunction drastically delays decision timelines, and could easily cost you your competitive advantage.
But when you define the decision first, everyone focuses on the same problem to solve. This helps clarify priorities, which streamlines and accelerates the entire process.
We have a whole toolkit of decision making practices at August, and they’re all grounded in Define the Decision. As the AVP of Product for the aforementioned Fortune 500 company said:
“Defining the decision helped clear away the noise and kept us moving with purpose.”
I think of Defining the Decision as a gift of clarity that you give yourself and your team in order to move forward. It’s the baseline habit that supports all of your other decision-making practices.
Try it out! It’s simple, but amazingly effective.
Keara Mascareñaz
Empowered Decision Making Practice Lead, August Public
