The hallmark of
contemporary competition in many industries these days is the
competition for talent. This competition is not limited to the
easily identifiable service industries such as banking, law,
accounting et cetera. As technology and international
competition rapidly redefine the needs of many manufacturing
businesses so their need for a smarter workforce grows. Are
smart, creative, and happy workers sufficient for success in
competition? Many companies that go to great lengths to have
above average employees often end up paying for average results.
These workers need the right tools to make the best decisions
for you company.
There are many potential causes of decision failure in
organizations. One reason is lack of a structured and
disciplined approach to decision making. This does not mean that
every individual or group decision has to be reached only after
following a strict check-list algorithm. However, it does mean
that organizations need to ensure that their smart workers have
a smart framework. What such a framework looks like will be
shaped somewhat by a company’s size and the nature of its
problems, but the basic principles will be the same.
In its most basic form, such a process will include providing
your team with a clear and measurable strategic objective to
help frame their decision and to serve as a metric for success
or failure. You will also need to ensure that your team has the
data it needs to test its assumptions and inferences as well as
to test the validity and robustness of its alternatives.
Executives are often skeptical of data driven decision making.
However, this if often the fault of poorly formulated questions
and vague requests for data. Managers need to ensure that their
teams are structuring decisions so that their alternatives are
mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. The team will
then have to decide what is the minimal amount of information
they will need to carry out its test of their alternatives is
better.
Where decisions have significant implications or for which
implementation has a long time frame and in any case have highly
uncertain outcomes, it is useful to try to develop small
experiments to generate data and further test your team’s
analysis. This may involve implementation in stages or in
limited geographies. In either case, your team will need to
clearly define what success and failure looks like at each phase
in order to validate o void their process.
At the end of it all – fail or succeed – you and your team need
to return to fray. In order to keep your bright sparks shining,
you need to ensure that they learn from their mistakes and are
motivated to improve their process and clarify their thinking in
future endeavors. Making mistakes is part of life, but learning
to avoid the repetition of mistakes is integral to running a
successful enterprise. Your team will need timely and frank
feedback about their problem solving and decision making. This
part of the process is often ignored or only attended to
superficially. Reviews of team performance ought to be carried
out regularly and should be conducted in as open a manner as
possible and in a way that is free of any personal attacks. The
egos of smart overachievers are often hard to navigate around,
but it is critical that it is done. Team members need to
continually learn and they know how to improve themselves if
your company is to retain any competitive advantage you bought
in recruiting. |
