The Three Foundational Elements of Good Decision-Making 

I think most leaders would agree that a big part of managing work is making decisions. Like most of you, I’ve worked with great decision-makers as well as some really bad decision-makers. Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip once said, “Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.”

Adams description of how decisions are made might be accurate for many organizations. Over the years of my career I’ve noticed that many organizations don’t foster good decision-making practices—handicapping  leaders, teams, and their organizations. The answers to the following three questions will help your organization foster a workable decision-making process:

1. Who? Prior to the beginning of any task or project, determining who has decision-making power is the first step.  There could likely be several decision makers.
2. What? Different members of the team will probably have different decision-making responsibilities based upon their role. Identifying the scope of everyone’s responsibility regarding the type of decisions they can and can’t make avoids confusion and makes it possible to streamline the process. Nobody wants to “Mother, may I?” every move they make, nor should the manager or team member be expected to make every decision.
3. How? Identifying how decisions are made and how they are shared with team members is almost as important as the decision itself.

Regardless of your work management methods or the project management tools you use, making decisions is part of a leader’s job. What’s more, it’s been said that in-decisions becomes decision with time.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius suggested, “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is the noblest; Second: by imitation, which is the easiest; and Third, by experience which is the bitterest.”

I don’t think there’s anyone who has to make decisions on a regular basis that wouldn’t agree with Mr. Confucius.

What are you doing to foster a good decision-making environment?

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As a freelance contractor, one of my biggest challenges is accurate billing.  My clients will call at a moment’s notice, with the expectation that I will drop everything and focus on their needs, and at times I have gotten so interested in what they are having me do that I simply forget to write down when I started or what I did.

The problem really comes when its time to bill them, because I do want to make the money I am due, but I don’t want to overcharge, and its always a nice thing to have notes detailing the work in order to justify the charges, if a question arises.

I’ve been currently using Dropbox as a time tracking tool, by saving a shared notepad text file between my home and work systems. But this isn’t much of a step up from how I did things before.  Today I discovered Chrometa, and at first glance, it looks like a winner.

Their site says:

Chrometa automatically keeps track of your work time — so you won’t have to. Uncover billable time that fell through the cracks, reconcile your billing in a snap, and supercharge your productivity.

I’ll still have to go ahead and install it, but its 2 am, so I’ll have to fill you in more tomorrow.