Strategic decision making

You can observe a general state of paralysis or indecision around, not just in businesses but at home too – “Should I spend?” “Should we go away?” And in business “Should we invest?” These types of questions are limiting by the very nature of the question. The question drives the critic in us and eventually the answer will be no.
There are many traditional questions that we are used to asking at work, things like:
1. What have we tried before? How did that work?
2. What happened?
3. How much will it cost?
4. What might work in this situation?
These are the types of questions you hear all the time, but how much do they help you progress? This style of questioning keep the questioner in control and simply reinforces his/her current thinking. They are factual questions that work within the current context. Our current economic context is not working. Many businesses are failing, redundancies loom and cash is dropping. For many organisations, they simply MUST start to do things differently. Leaders need to challenge their people in new ways, the answers are within us all, we just need to coax them out.

A n extremely artful coach, Jackie Hutchings from Footdown asked me yesterday “What’s one thing that I could give you that would make a significant difference right now?” wow what a question! But also what a simple one. It cut direct to the heart of the conversation. And you know what, it made me think, prioritise and ask (and she gave it to me!) That single question drove new behaviours in me all day that positively impacted on every action I took.

These types of questions, push people to think because they do not automatically know the answer. We have professional, capable people all the way through our organisations, its time to release control and encourage the ideas to flow. Try some of these.

1. Questions to change perspective
“What would Obama/ Redgrave/ Jim Collins/ your mum do?” Encouraging others to think about someone they respect and how that person might handle the situation.
2. Questions to develop a framework for a solution – encouraging others to consider what success would be like “Who needs to be happy with the result?” “It’s now 6 months in the future and we found the solution. What would that success look/feel/sound like?” “What are the critical concerns that we’d need to address  ensure a positive outcome?”
3. Questions to check in on resources – Resources are one of the key inhibitors. People feel automatically that they don’t have enough resources so they do nothing. Try asking “If we could adjust the tasks people do to make room for this, what would need to change?” “How would you solve this challenge without any additional money, time or people?” “If you knew the answer, what would you say?”
4. Questions to challenge assumptions – make a list of all the things you ‘know’ about the current situation. Then play devil’s advocate “How do you know that can’t be changed?” “What rules would need to be broken to make a change to this?” “What would be the worst that can happen if we do break that rule?” Now this doesn’t mean you can break all the rules – some of them can’t be broken, but ,by challenging some of your assumptions you will be able to drive deeper thinking that will help you find the answer.

These questions are great for development of individuals or strategic decision making. We often don’t use them because we are conditioned to apply factual questions and factual answers. It will take new discipline and new habits but we urge you to take this list and try them next time you have a significant challenge to solve and notice the difference.

The key to driving progress is to ask a different set of questions. Try some of these in your next management meeting and notice what differences in responses you get.

This blog today was inspired by a blog on the Chartered Management Institute’s blog “Tackling GroupThink” http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=50359613&gid=22310&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fblog%2Emanagers%2Eorg%2Euk%2Fpost%2FTackling-groupthink-5541%2Easpx&urlhash=PHnw&trk=news_discuss

Information on 6 thinking hats by Edward DeBono can be found on www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm

Information on Footdown can be found on www.footdown.com