The First 90 Days (50 page)

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wrongheaded. The key is to have a framework for understanding and communicating why different decisions will be approached in different ways.

Think of the different ways that teams can make decisions. As pictured in figure 7-3
, possible approaches can be arrayed on a spectrum ranging from unilateral decision making at one end to unanimous consent at the other. In unilateral decision making, the leader simply makes the call, either without consultation or with limited consultation with personal advisers. The risks associated with this approach are obvious: You may miss critical information and insights and get only lukewarm support for implementation.

Figure 7-3:
Group Decision-Making Spectrum

At the other extreme, processes that require unanimous consent from more than a few people tend to suffer from
decision diffusion
. They go on and on, never reaching closure. Or, if a decision does get made, it is often a lowest-common-denominator compromise. In either case, critical opportunities and threats are not addressed effectively.

Between these two extremes are the decision-making processes that most leaders use:
consult-and-decide
and
build
consensus
. When a leader solicits information and advice from direct reports—individually or as a group, or both—but reserves the right to make the final call, he or she is using a consult-and-decide approach. In effect he or she separates the “information gathering and analysis” process from the “evaluating and reaching closure” process, harnessing the group for one but not the other.

In the build-consensus process, the leader both seeks information and analysis and seeks buy-in from the group for any decision. The goal is not full consensus but sufficient consensus. This means that a critical mass of the group believes the decision to be the right one and, critically, that the rest agree that they can live with and support implementation of the decision.

When should you choose one process over the other? The answer is emphatically
not
“If I am under time pressure, I will use consult-and-decide.” Why? Because although it may be true that you reach a
decision
quicker by the consult-and-decide route, you won’t necessarily reach the
desired outcome
faster. In fact, you may end up consuming a lot of time trying to sell the decision after the fact, or finding out that people are not energetically implementing it and having to pressure them. Those who suffer from the action imperative are most at risk of this; they want to “reach closure” by making the call, but may jeopardize their end goals in the process.

The following rules of thumb can help you figure out which decision-making process to use: If the decision is likely to be highly divisive—creating winners and losers—then you usually are better off using consult-and-decide and taking the heat. A build-consensus process will both fail to reach a good outcome and get everyone mad at one another in the process. Put another way, decisions about sharing losses or pain among a group of people are best made by the leader.

If the decision requires energetic support for implementation from people whose performance you cannot adequately observe and control, then you usually are better off using a build-consensus process. You may get to a decision more quickly using consult-and-decide, but not to the desired outcome.

If you are managing a team of people who are relatively inexperienced, then you usually are better off relying more on consult-and-decide until you have taken the measure of the team and developed their capabilities. If you try to adopt a build-consensus approach with an inexperienced team, you risk getting frustrated and imposing a decision anyway, which effectively undercuts teamwork.

If you are put in charge of a group of people with whom you need to establish your authority (such as supervising former peers), then you are better off relying on consult-and-decide to make some key early decisions. You can relax and rely more on building consensus once people see that you have

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the steadiness and insight to make tough calls.

Your approach to decision making will also vary depending on which of the STARS situations you are in. Start-ups and turnarounds are situations in which consult-and-decide often works well. The problems tend to be technical (markets, products, technologies) rather than cultural and political in nature. Also, people may be hungry for “strong” leadership, which often is associated with a consult-and-decide style. To be effective in realignment and sustaining-success situations, by contrast, leaders often need to deal with strong intact teams and to confront cultural and political issues.

These sorts of issues are typically best addressed with the build-consensus approach.

To alter your approach to decision making depending on the nature of the decision to be made, you will sometimes have to restrain your natural inclinations. You are likely to have a preference for either consult-and-decide or build-consensus decision making. But preferences are not destiny. If you are a consult and-decide person, you should consider experimenting with building (sufficient) consensus in suitable situations. If you are a build-consensus person, you should feel free to adopt a consult-and-decide approach when it is appropriate to do so.

To avoid confusion, consider explaining to your direct reports what process you are going to use and why. More

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important, strive to run a
fair process
.

Even if people do not agree with the final decision, they often will support it if they feel (1) that their views and interests have been heard and taken seriously and (2) that you have given them a plausible rationale for why you made the call you did. The corollary is: Don’t engage in a charade of consensus building—an effort to build support for a decision already made. This rarely fools anyone, creates cynicism, and undercuts implementation. You are better off to simply use consult-and-decide.

Finally, you often can shift between build-consensus and consult-and-decide modes as you gain deeper insight into peoples’ interests and positions. It may make sense, for example, to begin in a consensus-building mode but reserve the right to shift to consult-and-decide if the process is becoming too divisive. It also may make sense to begin with consult-and-decide and shift to build-consensus if it emerges that energetic implementation is critical and consensus is possible.

[1]Our work has focused on how the leaders of senior teams can more effectively manage decision making. The first fruits of this collaboration are contained in A. Edmondson, M. Roberto, and M. Watkins, “A Dynamic Model of Top Management Team Effectiveness: Managing Unstructured Task Streams,”
Leadership Quarterly
14, no. 3 (Spring 2003).

[2]For a discussion of the importance of perception of fairness in process, see W. Chan Kim and Renée . Mauborgne,

“Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy,”
Harvard Business Review,
July–August 1997.