The Why, Who, and How of Collaborative Decision Making

Why Collaborative Decision Making?

Collaborate for high quality decisions. One mind is not enough to continually keep ahead in today’s complex, fast-moving world. Your market is diverse, and you need diverse perspectives and creative insights to align with your clients, employees and other stakeholders.

Multiple perspectives also lower the risk of cognitive biases that can cloud good judgement. Perhaps most importantly, buy-in from the team leads to commitment and accountability, which leads to successful execution

Who?

As always, take time to make sure the right people are at the table. Focus on problem solving and team skills versus politically easy appointments.  Include experts in the topic, but make sure to add people with outside perspectives as well – they will see things the experts don’t. Don’t be afraid to bring in trusted “outside” people.  Comprehensive discussion and the ultimate solution may lie outside where you consider your boundaries to be.

What is required?

Trust in the broadest sense is a precursor for collaborative decision making. Otherwise, team members will not give their full creativity, but rather, will hold back for fear of reprisal or dismissal of input. The leader must lay the groundwork for and manage a trusting environment.

Collaboration’s additional perspectives and enhanced buy-in take more time and energy than top-down decisions. You get out what you put in.

Finally, follow a process that makes sure every voice is heard, understood and appreciated

How?

Follow a process that is inclusive and digs deep. Many frameworks are available to assist you, but generally the flow looks like:

  • Frame the Issue: Keep the broad context in mind as we discussed in a previous article. How Leaders Can Bring Valuable Context to Decision Making.  An initial review of the issue is required by the leader, mainly to select the right team, but let the team develop the final framing of the issue as this will lead to the best question or issue to resolve.
  • Deep Examination of the Issue: Creative and robust discussion with constructive conflict to get to the root of the issue. It is OK to circle back and re-frame the issue if the deep dive shows that a more compelling view should be pursued.
  • Develop scenarios and select the best.
  • Define your SMART goals and develop a path to achieve them.
  • Assign owners and execute.
  • Adapt as you go. Your plan is a hypothesis, as you learn more you will need to adjust to ensure you reach your goal.

“It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” Charles Darwin

Sources: Discuto.ioPMI.org