Building decision making ability = Building the amount a business can do
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 9 mins
One Sentence Summary: Number of quality decisions a business can make = Magnitude of good a business can do. As such I believe a business should systematically build the decision making ability of its people (aka systematically build trust).
If you don’t let people make decisions you'll have to make all the decisions, and that build up of decisions means you’ll be a mega roadblock! A good decision from you increases the number of decisions the rest of the business can make.
Organisation Output = Decisions * Execution
With each person hired you want the amount of decisions an organisation can do to increase.
A key approach to building trust = Allowing people to make decisions and stuff up. If people can’t stuff up then they aren’t really making consequential decisions.
Building decision making ability = Allowing people to make mistakes = Building the amount a business can do = Building trust
More trust = More decisions = More impact. There’s no university course for making decisions. This is learnt through doing and you can’t ‘do’ if no one lets you ‘do’. The more you ‘do’ the better get at ‘doing’ which makes people trust you to ‘do’ more stuff.
Jingle: If you don’t systematically grow people’s ability to make decisions, I think your manager should make the decision that you aren’t allowed to make decisions!
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Details
Organisation Output = Decisions * Execution
Sometimes you know what to do and just need more of something. For example we need to make 10x the number of these widgets.
However, repetitive work is slowly being replaced by machines.
Eventually if you can’t make decisions then you’ll not be able to have a job.
For the majority of white collar work today, decisions need to be made all the time! In many respects, how many quality decisions a business can make = magnitude of good a business can do.
With each person hired you want the amount of decisions an organisation can do to increase.
Trust taxonomy
Bad: each person hired decreases the amount of decisions an organisation can make. Increasing bureaucracy smothers people. Decreasing trust.
Good: each person hired increases the amount of decisions an organisation can make linearly. Flat trust.
Great: each person hired increases the amount of decisions an organisation can make exponentially. Growing trust.
The larger the number of people the higher the chance of emergence. An emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as numbers increase.
In company speak: the greater the number of people = 1. More ideas + 2. More mixing of ideas + 3. More ability to collaborate to build solutions = Higher chance of new emergent outcomes.
Comment
I find that organizations tend to atrophy. Ie be ‘bad’ and build more and more systems to try and not have things go wrong… but they are also stifling innovation and creativity!
*aside: bad systems < no system < good system.
Many people’s natural response is to ‘care’, is to try to ‘protect’ the company to make sure things don’t go ‘wrong’. Obviously don’t allow risks that could kill the company… but don’t allow people not to take any risk... as you’ll often kill their time at the company (as they feel stifled).
An equation for trust: Trust needed = 1. One way door vs Two way door decisions (reversible vs irreversible) + 2. Size of decisions
Decision size taxonomy… size matters ;P
L0: None
L1: Small
L2: Medium
L3: Large
*aside: experience normally means over time that ‘larges’ go to ‘mediums’, then ‘smalls’... then it ain’t nothing at allz!
Reversible / Irreversible decisions are related to ‘size’. If something is reversible then it should max be a ‘small’... but feeling like something is a small is often easier said than done.
How do you determine the size of a problem? One approach is the ‘amount of new’ for someone. Ie how familiar the problem is to the decision maker
High new = Large
Medium new = medium
Low new = small
None = I’ve done something very similar 5+ times.
Responsibility vs Reportability - I don’t want to live in a police state, I want to live in a happy place.
The world today has more rules than ever before (eg laws)... but you can also do more than ever before. Good laws increase the possibility set of outcomes, not decrease. I’ve written about this before in ‘Positive Sum Principles’.
Rules Vs Principles
Rules = no interpretation needed, they are black and white. Eg no stealing.
Principles = interpretation needed. Eg give as much responsibility as you can to someone.
If you want to grow the number of decisions an organisation can make then you are normally setting and updating principles… and so is everyone.
Principal partitions:
-L1: removes downside of 1st order known area but as a ‘rule’ but is super rigid so it has 2nd order impacts of stopping / stifling other areas.
L1: removed downside of 1st order known areas as a ‘principle’ so that interpretation is used to allow the downside to also not happen in similar situations.
L2: L1 + minimally interferes with any 2nd order ability to add upside. AKA flexible downside removal + minimal interference with ability to add upside.
What kind of reporting do you have for the different sizes of decisions?
My general rule of thumb AKA principle is the following:
For Larges: if the problem is a large let your manager know your plan before you do it for sign off. Don’t have the manager make the decision for you, just check your decision before going ahead.
For Mediums: FYI your manager with eg an email when a decision is being made. If there is a red flag then the manager will reach out.
For Smalls: just do it, no need to let your manager know know.
If something you thought was a small turns out to be a large then let your manager know as soon as you think this about a decision you’ve made so they can be across it.
Who figures out what a small vs medium vs large is? Ideally you! IMO we want to systematically build as much trust AKA ability for people to make decisions in a company as possible.
Think with your Edrolo brain to identify the size of a problem and if you are the right person to address it (or if not you then who?)
Be a sponge to every situation - don’t be passive in your day to day. Watch the decisions made by others, consider how you would have done it, what the consequences are of each
Use every situation to level up your own decision making skills and achieve alignment
… however if anything goes wrong you need to let your manager know immediately.
Hiding something going wrong is a core way to break trust. I don’t care what has gone wrong, I do care if anything is being hidden.
If someone brings something that hasn’t gone right then I normally thank them for bringing it to me and say something like ‘what is your plan to address this please?’
Amount an organisation can do ≈ amount of quality decisions it can make ≈ amount of trust organisation has.
Trust is built not if things go well or badly, but by how someone acts. If things go badly you must say so immediately.
In short, one key approach I have to improving Edrolo is to build decision making ability in others, to build as much trust in people as possible.
When do you give people the opportunity to make a decision (aka build a unit of trust) vs When do you help them?
People normally level up (learn) through authentic experience.
So just because you might have high experience in a situation and have a strong idea of what to do so this decision is a ‘small’ for you, don’t necessarily rob someone of the opportunity to experience a ‘large’, ie don’t tell them what you’d do.
The more experience your organisation has the more trust it has / decisions it can make.
Time pressure Vs No time pressure
If you have time pressure for getting something done, help them with the decision (aka rob them of the ability to have an authentic experience of eg a ‘large’). This gets more done in the short term but decision ability / your trust in the other grows slower so it means you get less done in the long term.
If you don’t have time pressure for something done, then don’t help someone with the decision (aka give them the opportunity to have an authentic experience of eg a ‘large’). This gets less done in the short term as it will likely take longer / be a lower quality decision but in the long term you have grown trust and decision making ability so the organisation can do more.
Flailing is not failing. If you don’t allow people to flail then you are likely robbing them of the opportunity to grow.
Productive flailing: 1. Problem space * 2. Figuring out what to do => 3. Unit of learning => 4. Unit of trust built
No flailing: 1. Shown what to do * 2. Follow instructions => 3. No unit of learning generated
Different doesn’t always mean better
If someone solves a problem space different to how you would have solved it, this doesn’t mean it’s ‘better’
You can get from point a to point b via car, bike or parkour. The point isn’t how you got there, the point is that you got there
Recommendations vs Decisions - even if the decision isn’t theirs to make this doesn’t mean they can’t level up in decision making
Most decisions need an owner, ie the ultimate person who makes the decision.
Let’s say that the decision is ultimately mine to make, if I’ve been working with two other people on this problem, I’ll normally ask them for their recommendation on what to do. This allows them the space to build ‘decision making skills’.
After this we don’t go with a vote, a camel is a horse designed by committee, but of course one should listen and also try to build decision making ability!
Almost always I’ll want to know someone’s recommendation.
Building trust by giving people the opportunity to mess up
I used to think that someone had to earn trust before you gave them responsibility to make decisions.
*aside: obviously you don’t want to give someone responsibility for a decision that could kill a business… IMO even the CEO unless the decision is life or death. However if the CEO has run a business into a life or death situation then it’s likely the person shouldn’t be CEO!
“To have a friend first you must be a friend.”
A key strategy I have for building trust: to build trust allow someone to have the opportunity to make decisions and mess up!
Or, to have trust first you must allow someone to build trust.
If you only take one thing away
Trust = amount an organisation can do.
Responsibility not reportability is a core approach to grow trust.
I don’t want a sh1t ton of systems in place, I want lots of people you trust trying to do good but being fine knowing that at times things will stuff up.
Give trust and ask people to show you they deserve it.
Get rid of those who break trust and don't let them embitter you. Be better, not bitter. A key approach to being better is to build ‘positive sum principles’.
Give more trust / responsibility to those who do well with trust.
Each person added to an organisation should increase what the organisation can do.
Often people think they want a new job, but what they want is more responsibility (link). What they want is the opportunity to make decisions, to be able to stuff up and as such have the possibility of building trust.
I want to build as much trust as possible. I want an organisation to be able to do as much as possible. I want to have to do as little as possible. I want to help, I don’t want to have to help. IMO these things are the same!