I think most decision king processes in most organizations are about eliminating as much risk as possible, which is dumb? Yes, sure, it's just dumb. I think it's about the elimination of mistakes and the elimination of risks. What we end up with is layers upon layers upon layers to avoid a mistake that might not have actually been that big of a deal, might not have ever happened again. And so like, ok, one time someone interpreted the policy in this particular way as they were leaving the bank, and our lawyers couldn't, you know, argue it with them,. So now we have to rewrite the policy and spend six months pushing that policy to 80 thousand employees. It's
A big frustration we often encounter in our work concerns decision-making. Folks feel like their process is too slow; too fast; includes the wrong people; excludes the right people; is too big; is too small. No matter the specific organizational headaches, the headline basically stays the same: “We know this isn’t working but we can’t fix the problem.”
In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans take a deep dive into decision-making indecision, exploring:
- The impediments that tend to block good decision-making
- The “problems” traditional, top-down decision-making processes are designed to deal with
- The myths we tell ourselves about who can decide what and when
- The difference between being non-directive and being indecisive
- The simplest moves teams can make to up their decision-making game
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