StrategyDriven Decision-Making Best Practice Article

Decision-Making Best Practice 7 – Identify the Decision-Maker

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StrategyDriven Decision-Making Article | Decision MakerOrganizations confer varying degrees of decision-making authority to their executives, managers, and employees typically based on their positions within the organization. In many circumstances, this results in more than one individual possessing the authority to render a decision for the particular question at hand.[wcm_restrict plans=”49262, 25542, 25653″] Because there should be only one decision-making authority (see StrategyDriven Decision-Making Best Practice 1 – There Can Be Only One), it becomes necessary to identify who among the potential decision-makers is the individual on whose authority the selected course of action will be taken.

Identifying the decision-maker is critical to achieving a successful outcome. Without this designation, no one individual truly owns the decision or can be held accountable for it. Those implementing the decision lack the requisite knowledge of whom to report action status and results. Needed changes may lack the coordination needed to be effective or be counter to the decision’s goals because those authorizing such changes lack the ‘big picture’ view of the situation.

Identifying the decision-maker, especially for complex situations involving teams of people, should also include overt communication of that designation. This ensures everyone involved in the decision-making and execution process clearly understands the chain of command such that reports and change authorizations are appropriately directed.

Final Thought…

Serving as the designated decision-maker is a powerful leadership development tool. Whenever possible, senior managers should seek to confer this responsibility to high potential, junior personnel. When doing so, however, the senior manager must assume and remain in the role of coach and mentor; allowing their junior to be the decision-maker and not usurp this individual’s authority. Only then will the junior staff member truly benefit from the experience.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”49262, 25542, 25653″]

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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 29 – An Interview with Tammy Erickson, author of What’s Next, Gen X?

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles published on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 29 – An Interview with Tammy Erickson, author of What’s Next, Gen X? examines generational relationships within the workplace and the actions Gen Xers should take to ready and position themselves to be the next group of corporate and civic leaders. During our discussion, Tammy Erickson, author of What’s Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want and President of The nGenera Innovation Network, shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • who Gen Xers are and their shared characteristics and traits
  • what Gen Xers uniquely contribute to the marketplace
  • actions organization leaders should take if they face significant Boomer retirements and few Gen Xers in their succession pipeline
  • key actions Gen Xers should take to remain relevant within their organizations
  • how Gen Xers should prepare and position themselves for senior leadership positions

Additional Information

In addition to the incredible insights Tammy shares in What’s Next, Gen X? and this special edition podcast are the additional resources accessible from her website: www.TammyErickson.com.   Tammy’s book, What’s Next, Gen X?, can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

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About the Author

Tammy Erickson, author of What’s Next, Gen X?, is President of The nGenera Innovation Network, a thought leader in enterprise collaboration; providing hundreds of global corporations with key insights and senior advisory services focused on collaboration strategy, enterprise engagement, and enabling technologies. Tammy’s compelling views of the future are based on extensive research on changing demographics and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations work. She is an award winning author; having coauthored five Harvard Business Review articles, including the McKinsey Award winner It’s Time to Retire Retirement and the book Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills And Talent. To read Tammy’s full biography, click here.
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StrategyDriven Podcast Receives Top Honors in February

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The StrategyDriven Team would like to thank you, our listeners, for helping us achieve the third place ranking for the StrategyDriven Podcast from among the over 2700 business podcasts listed on Podcast Alley in February!

In each episode, our co-hosts present a richer and deeper exploration of the principle, best practice, and warning flag articles found on the StrategyDriven website. Their discussions identify benefits, define implementation methods, and provide examples to help leaders increase alignment and heighten accountability within their organizations.

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. With your support, our community of listeners and readers has grown tremendously in the past several months. Please help us continue to grow by recommending the StrategyDriven Podcast to family, friends, and colleagues who you believe will benefit from listening.

Additionally, please consider voting for us monthly on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our monthly ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, grows our community.

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StrategyDriven Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice Article

Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice 3 – Continuing Education

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StrategyDriven Succession and Succession Planning Best PracticeIt is simply not enough that individuals holding senior positions be highly experienced. The narrowness of early career positions and the limitations of time necessarily prevents an individual from being deeply experienced across the full range of functions within the organization. Thus, those relying purely on experience often lack an understanding of the broader spectrum of organization functions and opportunities that would help them be more successful in senior positions requiring multidimensional business understanding.[wcm_restrict plans=”40928, 25542, 25653″]

As indicated in StrategyDriven‘s Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice 2 – Rotational Development Plans, career time constraints and the need to develop a pipeline of talent makes it nearly impossible for one individual to hold every subordinate position prior to ascending to a senior role. Subsequently, temporary assignments, projects and initiatives, and continuing education should be used to create an appreciation for and understanding of the various processes, procedures, techniques and philosophies unique to those positions not actually held. Furthermore, education about the operations and support functions of companies from other industries can offer insight to improvement opportunities that would otherwise not be gained through the narrow experience of a single company’s operations. Continuing education, therefore, becomes critically important to creating a more well-rounded candidate for senior leadership positions.

Consider the following three candidates for a senior level position:

  • the highly experienced manager
  • the highly educated manager and
  • the manager with some experience augmented by ongoing education and continuing training

Overall understanding of the business’s functions, human resources, finance, information technology, marketing, sales, and production are represented by a spectrum. The deeper and richer the understanding and experience with an area the brighter the spectrum. Thus, bright lines represent intimate and nuanced knowledge of an area – that which can be only gained through first hand experience, dimmer lines represent knowledge and understanding of the function – that which can be gained through limited experience and formal training, and no color (black) indicates a cursory understanding of the area. (Figure 1, Individual Knowledge and Experience, depicts the completeness of knowledge and experience for each of the three candidates being considered.)

StrategyDriven Wisdom SpectrumThe Highly Experienced Manager (extensive firsthand experience complimented by pertinent job-specific training)

Notice that an individual relying solely on experience has many brightly colored spectral lines across the entire spectrum of knowledge about a business. In the example provided, the production manager clearly understands the area in which he/she is responsible and some aspects of the support organization which impact production functions such as performance evaluations in the area of human resources, use of production’s supporting scheduling tools in the area of information technology, and the impact of the seasonal sales cycles in the area of sales on production operations. However, between these lines are very dark areas where very little to no understanding exists because this manager perceives no reason to learn more about these functions as they do not directly impact the performance of his/her job. This individual, therefore, cannot consider the organizational opportunities for improvement that might exist in these areas because he/she is so unfamiliar with them as to eliminate them from the realm of possibility.

The Highly Educated Manager (little firsthand experience compensated for by a high level of formal education)

The highly educated but inexperienced person is hindered by a different condition. This individual has a broad range of knowledge across most of the organization’s functional areas but lacks a nuanced understanding of the real life circumstances that challenge the implementation of academic principles. Without the richness and depth of understanding brought by experience, this person is less likely to proactively recognize the real world adjustments needed to successfully implement well understood academic theories. Additionally, these individuals may not as readily see the nuanced interrelationships between business functions. Lastly, the lack of hands-on experience diminishes this individual’s credibility with front line personnel. All of these liabilities hinder this manager’s effectiveness identifying and implementing organizational improvements.

The Well-Rounded Manager (some firsthand experience augmented by ongoing education and continuing training)

The well rounded manager possesses a more balanced background; having a number of high quality functional area experiences augmented by continuing education. This individual’s firsthand functional experience provides him/her the insight to understand why the purely academic solutions he/she knows will often not work as intended when confronted by reality. Experience helps this individual conceptualize how these challenges might be overcome and the theoretical solutions adjusted so to be implemented successfully, a critical gap in the highly educated manager’s background. Education provides the well rounded manager with the knowledge to ‘see’ the possibilities, a sight the purely experience manager does not possess. Hence, the truly well rounded individual represents the optimal in-the-middle solution rather than one at the extremes.

Final Thought…

The ultimate candidate is one that is both highly experienced and highly educated. To achieve this requires ongoing education and continuing training. Over time, this ongoing education will culminate in the individual becoming highly educated while continued job performance will provide the experience. Job performance is a given. Continuing education is the best practices that should be pursued.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”40928, 25542, 25653″]

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In Tough Times Passion Keeps Businesses Afloat

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In our book, Liberating Passion, Paul B. Brown and I contend that businesses seek passionate people. This matters in tough economic times more than ever. Why? Because passionate commitment converts potential talent into the actual performance that struggling businesses need to survive. Moreover, the opposites – apathy and disengagement – are poor ways to get a return-on-talent (or a return on the ability/energy, for that matter, of our human assets).

Yet seeking to infuse passion in people is misguided. Passion is natural. Capable people abound with passion, at least in the areas in which they are talented. In fact, we see people passionate about so many aspects of life. If work isn’t one of those, it’s because companies institutionalize “passion killers.” Through mediocre leadership practices, dysfunctional teams, poor communication and dispiriting work cultures, companies become passion castrators.

[wcm_restrict]Relationships are central: they can be the canopy passion killer or the canopy passion liberator. Leadership is very critically about how we relate; how we engage each other; the respect we have for each other; the quality and candor of our communication; and, whether we amplify or nullify each other’s abilities. To create winning results we have to create winning relationships.

All the passion liberators we speak about in the book deal with how we relate, to a large extent. Here, let’s look at three crucial ones.

Intimacy. This may sound like a strange passion liberator, but we can’t be excited or effective on a team if we don’t know with whom we’re teaming. By letting people know who we are; what turns us on and what turns us off; our priorities as well as our peeves; and, our areas of esteem and anxiety, we allow masks to be removed and defensiveness to be defused. Rather than energy going into a charade of mutual cover-ups, energy can go into leveraging our best, coping empathically with our worst, and transcending individual limits through collective breakthroughs of relevance and importance to the business. We then gain courage and strength from each other’s support, rather than stoking each other’s neuroses and doubts.

Protecting Possibility. One of the demonstrable attributes of globally successful leaders is their ability to face complex facts and realities, distill them to their essence, and yet always look at them with the eyes of possibility. Call it “creative reality engagement.” But passion is destroyed when we evade reality, duck or downplay evident challenges, or indeed at the other extreme if we use “reality” as an excuse for our failed imagination or inadequate will. What we have to foster in our companies and teams is the ability to grapple with reality quickly, face it squarely, understand its dimensions and nuances, but always with the intent to transform it and even “provoke” it (a companion passion liberator that we discuss in the book) in the direction of our vision. The leaders we admire invented new possibilities and realities. Yet, they also emotionally accepted the realities from which they had to build. Kennedy had to get Americans to accept the Soviet technology and space exploration lead to galvanize our successful response. Steve Jobs and his team at Apple had to accept the moribund business results they were producing for so long, despite their iconic products, to engineer a magnificent turnaround.

Coaching Growth. Once we know each other and can transform what we encounter in the direction of our strategic business vision, we have to confront and encourage each other to grow in relevant ways to make that vision a reality. We all have an impact on each other. And one aspect of coaching growth is to become aware of the behaviors we have to improve, those that would make us more effective with others and create a more catalytic impact on those with whom we collaborate. Equally though, it runs deeper than behaviors. No one wants to memorize a list of behavioral niceties. Even if we were to memorize such a list and no longer give offense, we would still be unlikely to enroll each other’s passion. What we need is to commit to each other’s success. That means we have to understand success and value from the other person’s perspective. And as we develop a partnership of business purpose in our companies and teams, we also commit to helping each other succeed and win using that work as a medium. When team-members feel and express such a commitment to each other, both passion and results are abundant.

Understanding passion liberators, understanding each other, understanding the facts we have to harness and remake, understanding how to help each other succeed and committing to doing so – that’s how great global leaders produce great results while tapping our natural desire for passionate engagement![/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Omar Khan is founder and senior partner of Sensei International, a global leadership development firm. The above article is adapted from his book Liberating Passion: How the World’s Best Global Leaders Produce Winning Results (Wiley & Sons).