Last week, I wrote about the RICE Scoring Model, a method used to prioritize initiatives and make smarter decisions. I also mentioned a couple of other post in which I talked about prioritization methods and criteria:
Today I’m sharing another decision-making tool I uncovered recently. In 1997, the U.S. Army developed the seven-step Military Decision-Making Process to help teams develop, integrate, and synchronize their plans, ultimately to plan for success in dynamic environments.
David Robinson writes in Chief Executive magazine that he’s adapted this process and created one called Collaborative Planning Process. I won’t go into all of the steps and the details; it’s a great read. What I wanted to call out, though, is what he calls his deliberate decision-making checklist. It consists of seven questions:
- Is this a decision that I need to make now?
- Did I consider the strategic context, including realistic constraints?
- Did I get the right people with the right expertise in the room?
- Did I accurately frame the issue and encourage rigorous debate?
- Did I collect all of the relevant facts and consider all aspects of the issue?
- Did I identify and appropriately weigh the risks and opportunities?
- Do I feel enough conviction to be decisive and explain why I made the decision?
As I read this list of questions, I felt that these are, first, important to ask yourself before you walk into a leadership team meeting to present the initiatives that you want to move forward with. And second, these are the types of questions that they’ll be thinking about. So, these are the questions you need to make sure they can answer about/for themselves as they decide on the initiatives you present.
I believe these are also good questions to address or to answer in order to align the team on the decision. I’ve written about alignment a couple times. It really is an outcome that you want from any exercise where a decision needs to be or has been made. Revisit these two posts, and you’ll see what I mean.
What do you think of this deliberate decision-making checklist? Have you used anything similar when it comes to helping leaders (or others) make decisions? What other questions would you be sure to ask yourself? What other questions have you heard leaders address in their decision-making processes?
Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking. ~ Malcolm Gladwell
