How to avoid poor business decisions. — Q & A on Breakthrough Leadership

Lou Quinto:
Hi, welcome to Q & A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto.

Craig P. Anderson:
I'm Craig Anderson.

Lou Quinto:
Today's topic that we're going to cover is looking at the dynamics that drive poor decision making. In an earlier podcast, we went ahead and talked about how to make good decisions, but let's go ahead and take a deep dive here to find out what are the obstacles that prevent us from making good decisions. What are those dynamics?

Lou Quinto:
And we've listed them into three basic areas. One, making decisions with your gut. Two, not having a formal process and three, data and speed. Those are what we consider probably some of the biggest hurdles when it comes to decision making. So, making decisions with your gut. That's your intuition and your emotion. Craig, I know that you like to go with your gut.

Craig P. Anderson:
I would say, I think data is really important in the decision process and you've got all the things we talked about in the other episode about collecting data and having criteria, all those things are off, but if there's something still gnawing you at the end of that process and it doesn't feel right, there's something either you didn't consider or it's just not where you ultimately want to go. And if you're not going to be behind it, I'm not sure it's a decision you want to go through with. And I think there's at least somehow, I almost think it's some subconscious thing that's just telling you there's just some piece of this you're missing. Because in my experience, when I go against my gut, I can't think of the opportunities where it worked out well.

Lou Quinto:
Okay. All right.

Craig P. Anderson:
So that's me.

Lou Quinto:
Yeah, and basically your gut is your instincts. It's an instinct of patterns of your past experiences. Okay, which leads to overrated intuition and then emotion, because let's face it, every decision made emotion is involved.

Craig P. Anderson:
Right. Absolutely.

Lou Quinto:
And so when you go with your gut, I always like to tell people, if you got a decision that you need to sell up the food chain and you're going to make a decision on your gut, Deming had a great quote and that is, "In God we trust. Everybody else, bring data." And as you know, being in the positions that you've been in, you don't want someone to just stand up and say, "Well, it feels like a good decision." You're going to want the information behind that, that's going to support that decision.

Craig P. Anderson:
No, I get that and I think typically it's the gut for me kicks in more when it's a decision to not act. But yeah, I agree with you. My time working for large banks, you can even go to New York with a bunch of ... on a wing and a prayer. You went to New York after spending a lot of time putting together your data to make the requests that you went to make. So, I agree with that.

Lou Quinto:
Yeah. When it comes to your gut, I'm reminded of a quote from the movie High Fidelity, Nick Hornsby, at one point in the movie, he turns to everyone and he says, ""I've come to the realization since I was 14 years old that I've used my gut to make all of my decisions and I've just realized my guts full of shit." So unfortunately Nick had some bad decision making along the way.

Craig P. Anderson:
Some day we're going to pull pop culture references that aren't from 80s and 90s [crosstalk 00:03:08].

Lou Quinto:
All right. The next one is not having a formal process. In many instances when it comes to critical thinking and trying to be a good facilitator in a group, if you don't have a formal process where people know, okay, step number one is we're going to define our decisions. That number two is we're going to define criteria and then we're going to go gather our data. What ends up happening is it's all jumbled and your decision making becomes very unproductive. And so as I always like to recommend when I'm working with groups and doing some facilitation, is you've got to have a formal process. It's almost like in church, everyone's on the same page in the hymnal at the same time.

Lou Quinto:
If not, some people have already made their decision and they're just going to spend their time trying to support the decision that they believe it should be. And you've got people who aren't ready to make a decision where they just want to gather more data, gather more information, talk to more people. And at the end of the meeting you don't have a decision and it's unproductive. And so, but when you have a formal process, it's like having an agenda for a meeting. You know where you're going through the process. And so I tell people you don't need to pull out a wall chart or come up with some big thing, but if you know the steps of decision making, you'll be able to make better decisions.

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah, I think that's fair. And I think having the formal process is important. I think it's also to make sure you're pulling that through the organization. Right? So with so many things, it starts at the top. Is it obvious that the leadership team is making decisions that way? And if they're modeling that behavior and that decision making process and flow through the organization. So it was with all things, it's really incumbent upon leadership to set the tone for how we're going to make decisions in the organization and then that actually will spread through the organization, ensure better decisions across. So really creating that model and then making sure you're distributing that model so all the teams have it I think is a key piece of this as well.

Lou Quinto:
And not only distributing it but also coaching it so that if someone comes to you says, "I have a decision to make and I'm really stuck. I've got all this information, I've got all this data that I'm looking at." The first question you can ask as a coach or a mentor is, "What's your criteria?" And get them to focus on a process that they're using to go through that. So, works well.

Lou Quinto:
Okay. The last topic is ... and this is something that prevents a lot of the decision making and that is one, the data issue. We can talk about data until we're blue in the face. Do I have enough? Do I not have enough? And then speed. We live in an environment where decisions really are our best when they've been made yesterday and so when you get to that decision making process and you're in a hurry, you end up being lazy and go with your gut. And in fact, I always like to tell people that there's a natural force in critical thinking. The more time you spend on a decision the more accurate it will be. Less time, the less accurate. And it gives you time, if you have more time, to consult with other people, to talk to them about what they believe the needs are for this particular alternative or solution that you're going to implement. But if you have to make a quick decision, you miss out on all.

Craig P. Anderson:
No, I agree. I think ... I still think there's some opportunities for gut, but I think one of the things that's important here is on the team you put together, one of the things that I work on with my clients is a tool called Core Values Index. And part of that is kind of like where you lean to in decision making. There's innovators who are just going to turn lots of different criteria. You've got bankers who are more about collecting all that data. You've got builders who are just going to go, and merchants who are kind of the people side of the equation.

Craig P. Anderson:
To have that representation on your team and have those tensions and those strengths that comes from that, I think is really important. So you do want the person who's always coming up with the ideas, but you also want the person who's making sure that we have enough data and you don't want the person who makes sure everybody's heard and you want the person who goes, "Okay, we're there, let's go." Right? And I think having that kind of ... so it's very intentional about building the teams you build either at the leadership level or throughout your organization, they're making decisions to know where people fit into that pattern, I think it's very helpful.

Lou Quinto:
And there's different profiles too, as you were going through that, reminded me of social styles. You have the analyticals, the amiables, expressives and the drivers and they all approach tasks in different ways. Where the analytical wants to look at data, just like the title is. The driver wants to push things through. It doesn't want a lot of data. Let's get things done. The amiable is how are people going to feel about this particular thing. And they're going to deal with the emotional side.

Craig P. Anderson:
I like the kind of how they're going to feel.

Lou Quinto:
Yeah, yeah.

Craig P. Anderson:
I'm not that either, so I can identify.

Lou Quinto:
Yeah, and then the expressives are your idea people and they're the ones that are throwing out, "Hey, I've got a great new idea." So yeah, bringing a good cross section of those types of personalities together, very effective in doing that. But going back to the situation, you need to have the data, particularly if you're selling this up and you need to make sure that you're taking enough time to make the decision. If this is going to be a decision that's going to have an impact on a lot of people, I always tell people, why are you going to make the bad decision and break something that wasn't broken before and now you have to go back and do a whole bunch of rework that's going to take more time and probably more resources than if you took the time up front and said, "Yes, we know we need to make a group decision, but we need some extra time." I'm not talking two, three weeks, I'm talking another 24 hours to make that decision.

Craig P. Anderson:
I always used to always hear a lot and I thought it was a good point, was in the hiring process, right? Hire slow, fire fast. Make sure you're taking the time to make the right decision. You may lose some productivity if it takes you a little longer to get the right person, but you're going to gain it all in the back end. And so I think in this process, it makes a lot of sense to make sure you're getting the information you need and taking your time to make a good decision because it takes a lot to unroll a bad decision.

Lou Quinto:
And if there's anyone who knows anything about firing, it's you.

Craig P. Anderson:
That's a core competency, apparently. At any rate ...

Lou Quinto:
All right. Key takeaways. I talked about the dynamics of poor decision making. What did you see?

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah, well I think for me there's still a part, I don't like completely ruling out the gut. But I think it's more of going through all these other pieces are really important, if there's doubts, that's where that gut comes in. And you need to dig in why am I feeling this way? Why am I not feeling we made a complete decision? So I think that's important. But I think having the process gives you the freedom to kind of say, "All right, where did we make it wrong?" And I think my takeaway here is really having that process, taking your time to make that process and acting appropriately is a really good way [crosstalk 00:09:25].

Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And I don't discount your gut. Okay. But at the same time, if you're making a decision for yourself, you're the only person it impacts, go with your gut if you feel comfortable. But the minute one other person is brought into that mix that's changed and you need to find that common value and that's where we start getting into having that process, being able to make sure that we've identified that criteria in advance. We have the data that we've taken care of and so go with your gut, but validate your gut with that process because again, I'm not going to discount the gut, but at the same time you need to validate it, particularly when you're in an organization and you need to sell that decision up to get the authority or the permission to move forward with it. You just can't come in and say, "Trust me." Because-

Craig P. Anderson:
Trust but verify. There we go.

Lou Quinto:
Exactly, trust, but verify. All right, so thank you for watching this episode of Q and A on Breakthrough Leadership. If you've liked this video, go ahead and click on the light button to subscribe to it also so you know when the next podcast is coming out.

Craig P. Anderson:
And hey, we'd appreciate it if you'd share it with your colleagues. Put it out there for us on LinkedIn or whatever social media prefer. We'd like to spread the word. So we appreciate your help.

Lou Quinto:
Okay. So thanks again. I'm Lou Quinto.

Craig P. Anderson:
I'm Craig Anderson.