In the
Harvard Business Review video of “How
companies can make better decisions, faster” by Marcia Blenko, Blenko
argues that decision effectiveness correlates positively with employee
engagement and organizational performance (How Companies Can Make Better Decisions, Faster, 2010). In my personal opinion, I would have to
agree with Blenko’s argument. An employee who feels engaged in the decision
making process and feels empowered by the organization to make such decisions,
would work harder, smarter, and be much more efficient and effective compared
to employees outside of the decision making process. I think one of the reasons
for this is that employees feel personally and professionally responsible for
the decisions made and taken as well as the overall success of the
organization. In other words, due to clearer understanding of the goals that
need to be reached, employees have a stronger connection during the decision-making
process and therefore, end up being much more committed to the organization by
making effective decisions as a high performance team. Companies where
employees are more engaged in the decision-making process make it easier to get
things done more quickly and effectively.
There
could be many impediments to good decision-making such as coming up with a bad
idea due to misunderstood, faulty, or missing information. Another impediment
is making decisions too fast. Sometimes, in very competitive markets it is
important to stay ahead of the competition and therefore, quick decision-making
can be an impediment of good decision-making if we make an irrational decision.
Also, not involving the right people on the decision-making process can damage
or hurt the organization’s ability to make good decisions. Lastly, there are
times where we miss opportunities, are scared of the consequences of taking
huge risks, or fear failure overall. So, we end up taking the safe route or
making the safe decision even though it might result in loss of market share,
position in the marketplace, and so on.
On the
video, Blenko continues by suggesting that there are four elements of good
decisions: quality, speed, yield, and effort. The first element is basically
saying that decision makers should ask themselves: Did we make a good decision?
Is this a high quality decision? Is this the best we can do? Blenko defines the
second element speed as: Did we make a quick decision? Are we staying
competitive by making quick decisions? How quickly can we make important
decisions? The third element of good decision is yield. Blenko suggest that
decision makers should ask themselves: To what extent do we execute decisions
the way it was intended? Do we put enough pressure to provide good decisions?
The last element Blenko suggests for good decision is effort. Are we putting
all of our efforts and resources to this decision? Are we making the effort to
make the correct decision? Even though Blenko does not mention to this but to
my opinion, these four suggestions to good decisions is what makes up a high
performance team. High performance teams have clear understanding of the goals
that need to be reached and by the members implementing the right amount of
effort needed to make decisions, the quality, yield, and speed of
decision-making will be there. Therefore, other than calling a high performance
team another form of the external-internal OD practitioner team, I don’t
believe there is anything else missing from the four suggestions to good
decision.
From
this exercise, I take away the lesson of engaging employees more in order to
gain decision effectiveness and organizational performance. The more employees
feel involved in the decision-making the process, the more ownership, commitment,
and responsibility they will take
of the goals and the decisions that need to be made.
Reference:
How
Companies Can Make Better Decisions, Faster - YouTube. (2010, October 13).
YouTube. Retrieved September
8, 2013, from
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