Mastering the Art of Decision-Making in Leadership
Apr 24, 2024Season 1Episode 37
Colby Morris
Unlock the power of decision-making excellence and revolutionize your leadership prowess with our latest insights. As your guide, Colby Morris, reveal transformative strategies that promise to sharpen your choices at the helm. Through real-world scenarios like the launch of a high-stakes marketing campaign, this episode illuminates how embracing diverse perspectives can drastically enhance the outcome. I dissect the synergy of data and human insight, charting a course for leaders to navigate the complex waters of decision-making with confidence and precision.
Venture into the intricacies of project management as we apply these groundbreaking tactics to a pilot program in Asana. You'll discover the significance of crafting clear success criteria and the non-negotiable demand for perpetual growth in our decision faculties. I extend an invitation for you to join the conversation on social media, sharing your journey and expanding the collective wisdom of leaders who make decisions rapidly and with informed clarity. This episode is not just a learning experience—it's a beacon for those looking to leave a mark of excellence in their leadership legacy.
Unlock the power of decision-making excellence and revolutionize your leadership prowess with our latest insights. As your guide, Colby Morris, reveal transformative strategies that promise to sharpen your choices at the helm. Through real-world scenarios like the launch of a high-stakes marketing campaign, this episode illuminates how embracing diverse perspectives can drastically enhance the outcome. I dissect the synergy of data and human insight, charting a course for leaders to navigate the complex waters of decision-making with confidence and precision.
Venture into the intricacies of project management as we apply these groundbreaking tactics to a pilot program in Asana. You'll discover the significance of crafting clear success criteria and the non-negotiable demand for perpetual growth in our decision faculties. I extend an invitation for you to join the conversation on social media, sharing your journey and expanding the collective wisdom of leaders who make decisions rapidly and with informed clarity. This episode is not just a learning experience—it's a beacon for those looking to leave a mark of excellence in their leadership legacy.
Welcome back to the TLD podcast, where I work to help leaders get better faster, by focusing on actionable advice and not just theoretical. Who am I? My name is Colby Morris, the founder of this podcast. I'm a fractional COO, founder of Next Step Advisors and a leader for over 20 years now and a leader for over 20 years now. Today we're diving into the nitty-gritty of decision-making, one of what I would call the cornerstones of effective leadership. We all know bad decisions can derail progress, but how can you put yourself in the best position to assure you're consistently making the best choices for your team and your organization? I'm going to give you three actionable steps you can implement right away to become a better decision maker. All right, you know how this works. I'm going to give you some action items and then we'll discuss. So. Action item number one embrace diverse perspectives. Embrace diverse perspectives. See, leaders can often fall prey to confirmation bias, seeking information that confirms their existing beliefs, but this obviously leads to blind spots and less than optimal decisions. So here's how to embrace diverse perspectives.
Speaker 1:
Step one I want you to assemble your A-team the 90s kids, you remember the A-team. I want you to assemble a decision-making team. This needs to be your go-to team. They need to have varied backgrounds, varied experiences and different skill sets than you backgrounds, great experiences and different skill sets than you. You can make this a formal advisory board, or maybe just a temporary group that you've assembled for a specific decision, or maybe it's just people in your life. If you're making a personal decision, these are people you've given permission to speak into your life's choices, all right.
Speaker 1:
Step two communicate the issue clearly. Present the problem or the decision to be made clearly to your team. Okay. Outline all the key considerations, the goals, the potential consequences of all the different options. The more clearly you communicate the parameters of this project or the issue, the easier it's going to be to solve it. I've seen so many leaders who think they've communicated because they've said something. That doesn't mean you communicated. You have to sure. You have to check for understanding, make sure that they truly understand what you've said. All right. Step three I want you to encourage open discussion. Okay, so you've assembled your A-team and you've communicated the issue.
Speaker 1:
Now it's up to you to create not just an environment but a culture where everyone feels comfortable sharing their viewpoints, even if they're different from yours. Now you may be wondering why did I differentiate between environment and the culture. I put it this way because the environment can be temporary. The culture is a long-term identity of your team and organization. You can have a great culture and the environment be temporarily disrupted, but then it will go back to the culture, and the flip side is obviously true as well. You can have a bad culture and the environment can shift temporarily, but then it can go back to that bad culture can go back to that bad culture. So you need to make sure that you've cultivated a culture where people feel free expressing their thoughts. Then I want you to ask open-ended questions and actively listen to opposing perspectives. Okay, make sure you get input from the entire team and if someone's quiet, I want you to ask them specifically. You, as the leader, need to hear all the opinions, all the thoughts, even if they're countered to the rest of the team. Someone in there may have discernment that the rest of the team does not have.
Speaker 1:
Let's work through an actionable example. Imagine you're considering a major marketing campaign launch. Your A-team would include all the main people you need to be at the table. Your A-team would include all the main people. You need to be at the table, like your marketing director, a data analyst, a sales representative, maybe a customer service representative Each person is going to bring his or her own unique perspective to the table, and that's going to help you make a more informed decision. You're going to lay out the parameters and all the goals of the campaign, with all the applicable data targets, okay, and again being as concise as possible. Then get them to start talking, ask questions, make a list of their questions and really get into it with them. Make sure everyone has a voice. You need to dig.
Speaker 1:
All right, let's move to step number two. I want you to harness the power of data. Yes, every leader knows that intuition plays a role in decision making, but data can also be your best friend. Here's how you can leverage data to make better choices. Number one identify the relevant data points. I want you to gather data relevant to the decision at hand. This could include things like market research, sales figures, customer feedback or maybe an employee performance metrics. And then step two I want you to analyze the data objectively. Don't cherry pick data just to fit your desired outcome. Most of you probably have seen this in action if you've been in leadership long enough, where people try to make the numbers match what they want to say. Make sure to look for any patterns, any trends, any correlations that can help you make your decision.
Speaker 1:
You need to utilize data visualization tools to make complex data sets easier to understand. I laughed at that one when I was working on the phrase for it Data visualization tools. That sounds like what someone would put on their resume for something very simple. You know what I'm talking about, though. Right, I'm talking about graphs, data tables, dashboards, whatever type of visual aid you would use for your industry or report. That's what I'm talking about, all right.
Speaker 1:
Step number three integrate data with qualitative insights. Okay, while data is essential, you cannot ignore the human element. Combine your data analysis with the diverse perspectives from your A-team Okay, that's going to give you a better human centered picture. So let's revisit that marketing campaign launch example from just a little bit ago. Data can tell you about customer demographics, past campaign performances, even competitor activity. You're going to use this data alongside your team's insights to then determine the optimal or appropriate target audience. You can determine your budget allocation, campaign messaging Okay, this is where you meld the data with the people portion.
Speaker 1:
And finally, item number three embrace experimentation, and a little side note here I want to put, especially for smaller decisions. See, not every decision needs a month-long analysis. For smaller choices, you can try experimenting as like a learning tool. Here's how I want you to do that. Step one define a test. Okay, just outline a small scale experiment to test different approaches. This could be piloting a Facebook marketing campaign or asking new questions in an interview, or revised verbiage in a sales script.
Speaker 1:
Step two I want you to set clear metrics. Define success. Define the success metrics for your experiment. It's tough to hit a target you can't see. It's the same thing here. You need to know what success will look like. This could be customer engagement or sales conversion rates, or even employee satisfaction. And then, step three, I want you to analyze and adapt Once the experiment concludes. Analyze results and see what worked best. Okay, use what you learned in the process to shape your future decisions and refine your approach. Especially if they produced results contrary to your preconceived notion of what they were going to be. There are strong lessons. An actionable example of this process would be something like this An actionable example of this process would be something like this let's say you're considering a new software program to streamline your workflow.
Speaker 1:
In this instance, let's say you were looking at the project management software Asana. What you could do is run a test pilot with a small group of employees, Define what they will be recording and tracking in a second and how often they'll be doing it. You want to make sure that, as a group, you decide what success will look like or how it will be determined. That could be something like reducing downtime, speed of transition from one person to the next, or maybe even total time of completion for a small project. Okay, doing this will allow you to assess its effectiveness before you make a large investment. So these three action steps creating your A-team, leveraging data experimenting, leveraging data experimenting those things will equip you to make better decisions faster. Remember, effective decision making is a continuous process. By actively seeking out new information, challenging your assumptions which many of us don't like to do and learning from experience, you can become a more confident and decisive leader.
Speaker 1:
Thank you to everyone listening. If you want to connect with me, my LinkedIn and Instagram links are in the show notes. If you're getting value from this and you feel another leader could as well, would you mind sharing what you're listening to? Just either a screenshot right now or just share the actual podcast itself. Again, I want to help as many leaders as I can get better faster. So go out there, work to make better decisions, start practicing the things that you're learning, because that's the only way you get better. And you get better by doing the things that leaders do.
