Randy Cronk's Blog: Bain Wants You To Decide

Bain is promoting a paper on its home page called "The Decision-Driven Organization" by Paul Rogers, head of Bain's worldwide Organization practice, and Marcia Blenko, who leads Bain's Organization practice in North America.

In high-tech we value non-hierarchical structures and informal information sharing. But ultimately someone has to take charge.

The authors conducted a survey of senior executives at 356 companies comparing "top performers" to "all others" on how much they credit decision-making for their business success (or lack to it). The study found that a 90% of the executives surveyed in the top performing companies believed that their companies had the ability to make and carry out effective decisions. Only half of the executives in the "all others" category believed the same about their own organizations. In other words, in successful companies decision-making is a conscious act that needs to be taken seriously and developed. Top performers do that in five specific ways, the paper says. Specifically, they strive for:

Strong leadership
Clear accountability
Talented people
Outstanding frontline execution
A performance culture

The paper drills down in each of the five areas with examples and lessons from the top performers. My question is: Why don't more companies get good at this? The paper mentions complacency as one reason, but it doesn't really go much further. I think that would make a good area for a follow-up study. Technology, in particular, is a decision-rich environment, since on any given day even a "no decision: decision can quickly put you on the fast track to oblivion. Having been in countless market campaign planning sessions let me offer some of my own observations.

10 Reasons Why Decisions Don't Happen

You can be wrong. Making a bad decision puts a target on your back.
Decisions are not PC. You can't please everyone in every meeting, and in some cultures consensus and compromise are more highly valued than risk and results
Alternatives are not clear. To make a decision, you have to know exactly what it is you are deciding, and sometimes that is not always brought to the surface.
No one knows who's supposed to decide. A decision is an intellectual product, not simply an intellectual exercise, and someone must be tasked with the deliverable.
Time limits are not clear. If you ask someone for a decision, you also have to say by when.
Decisions don't stick. If you decide today to do something and then next week not to do it, that's called letting events take over.
People don't know what a decision is. It is the intent to take a deliberate action by someone within a specific period of time.
No follow-up. Whether the decision ultimately works or not, someone has to be held accountable for doing what they agreed to do.
Power is to too distributed. In high-tech we value non-hierarchical structures and informal information sharing. But ultimately someone has to take charge.
Great decisions are not celebrated. People need to recognize that good results rarely happen by accident. They should hear a bell ring when a great decision happens.