- Friday
Decision Making & AI
We’ll get to AI, but let’s start with decision making, the foundation of leadership. Do you have a shared decision making approach?
Wild West
If your leaders follow the have-an-idea/start-to-implement non-theory of decision making, I can tell you what it’s like to work in your company without a visit or staff interviews.
You may say you’ve got an “empowered, creative, iterative” culture. You may be proud you support grassroots efforts no matter where they pop up in the organization. Meanwhile your average team member is swimming against the tide of chaos, stacked initiatives, wasted resources and facing frustration and burnout.
Expensive Mistake
I don’t know where we got the idea that leading decisions and leading people are self-evident pursuits for which anyone who’s good at something is fully prepared, but it’s a very expensive mistaken assumption.
Recently it’s been fashionable to laughingly acknowledge halfway decision making with technically impossible statements like “we’re flying the plane as we build it.” No, you’re not. You’re bumbling along amidst haphazard decision making and poor communication and hoping things turn out OK.
Yes, sometimes you’ve got to move before you’ve analyzed all likely impacts.
What should be a decision making exception has become modus operandi in more than a few companies.
Decision Making Process
The best organizations have a systematic decision making process that is clear to all, open to all, and used by all.
Shared processes support leaders and invite leadership at every level. A decision making approach, in particular, holds especially significant impact because decisions are being made every day, at every level, with consequences for customers, teams, leaders, other stakeholders, and the bottom line.
AI amplifies and exponentially extends decision impacts. It’s a critical time to define your decision making process and how AI fits in.
5 Steps to Better Decisions
Define the problem or opportunity
Explore possible solutions
Write a proposal & invite input
Make a decision, implement
Communicate results
1. Define the problem or opportunity
This requires deep focus, critical thinking, research. AI can help at the research phase, but prior focus time and critical thinking are essential.
2. Explore possible solutions
Start with brainstorming, then evaluate costs and benefits. Consider how possibilities would impact the team, connect with your policies, and what precedent each may set. Review technology for integrative capacity and delivery.
3. Write a proposal and invite input
This is a silver bullet. Really. A written proposal improves any decision making process. It systematizes prep, summarizes communication, and is the basis for inviting input and gaining buy-in. A proposal clarifies from the start who is ultimately making the decision.
Share ahead of meetings to prime the team for productive conversation. Distribute electronically and invite comment. Discuss in a one-to-one with a key leader.
Then tweak for best insights. Note in the proposal template downloadable above reference to AI and AI tools.
AI is a complement to good decision making, not a source of it.
4. Make the decision, implement
Whether you're deciding, you're leading a decision that a group makes, or you're approving a direct report's proposal, decide timely and implement.
5. Communicate results
Measure and report on what you learned along the way. Closing the communication loop with those who gave proposal input honors the team and builds shared knowledge for even better future decisions.
Taming the AI Narrative
The rapidly expanding capabilities of AI inspire frothy headlines daily. There’s pressure to totally reorient, with AI at the center.
Keep your head and stay focused on good, disciplined decision making!
Decision making about AI policy, what software to test, how your business uses AI, and accountability is a BIG DEAL with huge consequences.
Don’t let anyone bully or shame you into using AI before you’ve soberly and confidently moved through a good, systematic decision making process that neither shuns AI nor considers it a savior.