Businesses, like individuals, are faced with the challenge of making decisions every other day. There are some interesting statistics about this. First, teams are thought to make better decisions than individuals - about 66% of the time. In addition, there’s a huge point on diversity as all-male teams are thought to make a quality decision about 58% of the time, whereas gender-inclusive teams rack up the figures to 88%. 

Clearly, having a team is one point up for businesses that want to make good decisions, along with ensuring that there are both men and women decision-makers on such a team. When you put all that in place, you will have one major step left. That is to ensure high decision quality and we have carefully analyzed what it takes here in this article. This article focuses on decision quality, on decision quality framework, and on ways in which teams can implement sound decision processes. 

What is Decision Quality?

Decision quality is the score of a decision in terms of its efficiency and effectiveness. The term considers the general soundness of a decision by analyzing how well it responds to a decision problem. 

A critical point on decision quality is that it has nothing to do with the outcome of the decision. That states, for instance, that a quality decision may not produce the right results but will still be considered to be sound depending on the criteria it was formed from. 

Framework for Decision Quality

The science of decision quality does not try to predict what a quality decision would look like in any given situation. Instead, it creates a kind of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) outline, expressing the steps that teams and individuals could take when they need to make a sound decision. The six elements of this framework are:

Frame:

Framing in decision quality creates a structure for how to think and what to think about. It involves the consideration of the purpose, scope of the decision, and prevailing perspectives on the decision problem or any other variables. 

In this framing moment, you might ask, “What is it we are deciding?”. You can frame far and wide, leave it on a small scale, or just simply decide what you will not decide about.

A good practice in this stage is to invite the appropriate people and solicit their input and support. Many times, this improves the quality of the final decision and primes the business teams for action. 

Alternatives:

Many decisions are preceded by two choices: options A and B. This is more like an everyday light switch: on or off, yes or no, follow up with this idea or thrash it. 

For example, let’s say that your office supervisor speaks to you about a potential funding opportunity for the company, and after explaining the T&Cs, he requests to know your opinion on submitting an application or ditching the opportunity. Your decision in this case will boil down to a positive or negative on the application. 

In many other cases, however, the choices for a decision goes beyond a simple yes or no. Such decisions are more complex since they feature different options or alternatives. For instance, let’s say that your supervisor told you about two or more funding opportunities - with an obligation to weigh the different alternatives and choose one which the company will apply to. 

Along with having lots of alternatives comes the issue of opportunity cost. Opportunity cost refers to the potential benefits that you would be missing out on by choosing one alternative over another. All alternatives in a decision may have their own unique benefits, therefore, going with one of them means forfeiting the advantages that all other alternatives might bring. 

Information:

Information helps to improve the quality of our decisions. A clear example is in the funding instance above. The availability of information on the funding terms and conditions assists in forming the receiver’s choice on writing an application or not. Knowing that they are fully informed on the T&Cs also builds confidence, strengthening their stance and conviction. 

Sound decision-making processes confirm information to be:

Useful: 

You want to start by sieving useful or necessary information from the completely unnecessary ones - and also putting a pin on what may or may not turn out to be useful down the line. Doing this saves you time and resources. It ensures that you do not make conclusions from ideas that do not bear any weight in the decision-making process. However, you must remember that the usefulness of information is unique to the decision to be made. 

Accurate:

Certain information is useful but not accurate. Just imagine that the supervisor in our funding story above had the details of the terms and conditions all wrong. The T&C information would then be useful but, painfully, inaccurate. 

Relevant (based on timeliness):

Timely information is required for any kind of decision.  For instance, imagine that your office supervisor, in the story above, tells you about the funding opportunity hours after the application deadline. Of course, it would barely make any sense and it would be far less useful at that time. Along with these three, information must be whole. It should be sufficient for the scope of the decision and must also help identify gaps and variances in the decision process. 

Values and Trade-offs:

Values and trade-offs make up a two-part element in a decision-quality framework. The first part, which talks about values, highlights the objectives of a decision; and what it intends to achieve or promote. 

Trade-offs - on the other hand - present a decision maker with having to choose between the speed of making a decision (what time it takes to decide and take action) and the quality of the decision (how good and effective it turns out). 

While it feels like speed must be sacrificed for decision quality - and vice versa, a McKinsey survey article says top-notch decisions always excel in both criteria. It expresses that “faster decisions tend to be higher quality, suggesting that speed does not undercut the merit of a given decision.” 

Reasoning:

Reasoning involves applying logic and critical analysis in decision-making. It is a mental process that points teams towards verifiable and reliable information or context and further empowers them to draw meaningful conclusions from these facts, evidence, or arguments.Sound reasoning produces creative ideas, which in turn, affects the quality of the final decision made by a team. 

Commitment to Action:

In the end, it is only reasonable to apply the decision quality framework and go through the stress of making a high-brand choice when you are sure to take action. The makeup of your decision team should always involve facilitators - who are people capable of driving the final agreement into action. 

How Teams Can Implement The Decision Quality Framework 

Now you have a picture of what a decision quality framework is and you are probably thinking, “What do I do with this?” We answer that right here in this section by letting you in on actionable steps. This will get your team towing the right line as far as decision-making is concerned. 

Assign Responsibilities

You probably know your team well enough to tell who is good at what. Put that knowledge to work by appropriately assigning responsibilities. Remember that the goal here is to have the most skilled people work in the area of their expertise. Once this is achieved, the entire team will be propelled forward, experiencing significant speed and accuracy. 

Sharing responsibilities forms the basis of teamwork. It also goes further to enhance personal development among employees by building their competence, growing their knowledge, and helping them to pick up entirely new skills. 

Encourage Critical Thinking

Creative and brainstorming sessions are a healthy way to enhance your team’s decision quality. To get this going, the team needs to ask the hard questions and move beyond surface-level answers. They should be interested in knowing the “why” of the “why”. For example, what makes option A the most reasonable approach, what reasoning is behind that, and what facts back up such reasoning? 

Performing critical thinking helps teams come up with a water-proof idea or decision. Their thorough analysis of a decision problem, the possible solutions, and the results and consequences will build the reliability of a decision, reducing the margin of error and provisioning backup plans.  

Overcome Biases and Assumptions

Most often, team leaders have the final say. Even when they know nothing about the decision problem or are clearly off track in their reasoning, their opinions are usually taken without question or confrontation. Similarly, you could realize that ideas from specific people within a decision team are deliberately left out - without any consideration - for one reason or another. 

The assumption that a team leader knows it all or the bias of a decision team to totally write off individual inputs are things that ruin the flow of a quality decision process. These are subtle but significant issues and it is sad to say that many more exist among real-world teams. 

Biases and assumptions prevent the supply of more meaningful contributions within a decision team. Moreover, they also devalue the quality of the final decision made. Businesses can overcome them by placing a strong priority on the resourcefulness, accuracy, and validity of a decision or idea over the reputation of the idea owner or team member. 

Turn Decisions into Action

Everyone on a team has a responsibility to take action. They may not be directly involved in a decision-making process or in the execution of the decision action. However, they must put in some effort, no matter how small. Having this mindset builds team corporations and prompts assistance and collaboration. 

Conclusion 

You probably didn’t think that the quality of your decision is heavily influenced by the gender makeup of your team. It is. And this gives a point to consider when you’re creating a decision-making team. 

Following your understanding of the decision quality framework, you must learn to assign responsibilities appropriately, encourage critical thinking, overcome biases and assumptions, and finally, turn decisions into actions.

This will keep your team knowledgeable on the right decision processes and steady on its deliveries. Check out our blog for more informative articles.

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