Flying Saucer in Mars PA (from my files)
I’ve been catching up on some blogs, and came across one from Leandro Herrero on 3 Ways to Get Approval from your CEO or Leadership Team that essentially described some decision modes:
My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us to do?
I need you to approve A. We also have options B and C but would not recommend them.
Just to let you know that we are doing A. We explored B and C, but they did not rank as high as A.
These all have the team conversing with the leader, based on their current understanding. But of course there are other modes of decision making from full autonomy of the team to the leader doing everything. How a leader / manager might choose to use these modes of decision make obviously has a lot to do with context. Sometimes it is critical to simply make a decision and go, and sometimes it is important to get out of the way, and let a team move as quickly as they can.
Leader decides:
Announce: “This is what we are going to do.”
Explain: “This is what we are going to do, and this is why.”
Discuss: “This is what we are going to do. What questions do you have? How might we best implement this decision?”
Leader takes input (but still decides):
Discuss the decision: “I think I want to do A. What do you think?”
Discuss the problem: "Here is the problem, team. What options do we have to solve it?”
Leader delegates the decision:
Delegate the decision within limits (time, money, options, etc). This looks a lot like #2 above, and maybe #1 if the limits are being challenged.
Delegate with full authority - the team is acting under the leader’s full authority, so there are still limits but those are the same as what the leader operates under.
One of the important elements of the discussion is that it helps to be clear on what type of decision mode we are in - I have seen a lot of conflict in organizations created simply because people had different assumptions about what their role was in the decision. (Similar examples would be the RACI Matrix or the PACE model or several other variants.)
I learned about this from a consultant many years ago (they retired a while ago) and refer to the concepts from time to time. It’s a useful way to check when people get wrapped around the axle on a decision: “what mode are we in?”