You asked yourself more than once, how to speed up your decision making process in your organization?

Here you find some of the most helpful decision types that are really easy to use:

Advice Process
It distributes decision making authority throughout the organization. Thus anybody in the organization is entitled to make any decision:

1. 1. Someone in the organization spots a problem, idea or opportunity and takes the initiative to become the decision-maker.
   2. The decision-maker makes a proposal for the decision.
   3. The decision-maker then seeks advice from all people being affected by the decision and by the people who have specific expertise in the matter (e.g. Finance, Tech-Maintainance, HR).
   4. Taking the advice into account as best as possible, the decision maker makes a final decision.
   5. The decision maker then takes action and informs all the people who have been giving advice about the final decision.

Integrated Decision-making
This is a very structured process in self organized circles that is facilitated by a role called “facilitator”, which is an internal role and member of the circle.

1. 1. Proposal : proposer describes the problem and a proposal for a solution to it
   2. Clarifying Questions: anyone can ask clarifying questions. Proposer can answer. No reactions or dialog allowed.
   3. Reaction round : each person can react to the proposal as they see fit. No discussion or responses.
   4. Amend & clarify : proposer can optionally clarify the intent or amend the proposal based on reactions. No discussion allowed.
   5. Objection round : facilitator asks each person in turn: ”Do you see any reasons (= “Objection”) why adopting this proposal would cause harm or move us backwards?” or “Is this proposal now safe enough to try?” Objections are stated, tested, and captured without discussion; the proposal is adopted if none surface.
   6. Integration : The goal is to craft an amended proposal that would not cause the Objection (see above), and that would still address the proposer’s problem. Process each Objection, one at a time. Once all are integrated, go through another Objection Round.

Systemic Consensus

1. 1. Exploration
      • Brainstorm and come up with as many possible solutions as possible, without judging them.
      • Add the “Zero option” (do nothing, let everything as it is, decide later…)
   2. Evaluation
      • The proposed solutions plus the Zero option are evaluated and judged by each person.
      • Each person gives each proposal from 0 to 10 points according to individual resistance. 0 points is full acceptance of the proposal, 10 points is maximum resistance to the proposal.
      • The resistance points are then added together to calculate where there is the minimum resistance to the proposals.
   3. Execution
      • The proposal with the minimum resistance is the proposal which comes nearest to consensus. This is the group decision.

Pre-Approval

1. 1. Agree with your team on the framework conditions of decision-making: e.g. guidelines, budget and who needs to be consulted or involved during the decision-making process.
   2. The manager approves someone’s decision within the framework conditions – before they even come up with.
      • This process enables employees to really own their decisions. It forces the employees to feel fully invested in the decisions they make themselves.
      • Besides just ownership, the process also provides employees with the freedom and space to innovate, to be creative and to be able to improve continuously. In the end, the people on the front line know best what issues the organization is facing on a day to day basis. And these front line people are also the ones that know best how to solve those issues and how to improve the lives of their customers and suppliers!
      • Thus people will do everything in their power to make their decision a success. Success rates will raise just as levels of ownership, entrepreneurship and pride.
      • At the same time it frees leaders from the need to try to convince and persuade their people to go into a predefined direction.
      • And: The leader is for sure far from micro-managing the people.

Pushing Down
It frees leaders from making countless decisions and from becoming the bottleneck for quick decisions. At the same time, they enable frontline staff to make calculated decisions that speed up the complete organization.

1. 1. Identify where in the organization decision making authority is established, required or specified. Make an overview of all current decision-making authority and make this visible by, for example, plotting it on a wall.
   2. Ask the employees to join them in the process and ask them to identify all decisions that might be candidates for being pushed down to a lower level in the organization. The employees will identify all the decisions they think they’re capable of making and share their thoughts with their leader.
   3. In a constructive dialogue the team will then share concerns and find solutions once the decisions are being delegated. As a result, many of the decision-making authority will end up in a lower level of the pyramid while leaders don’t have to worry about undesired outcomes.