Better Management Decisions
-- Getting Help

Implementing a dynamic approach to strengthening management decisions should be a relatively simple and straightforward process in most organizations. Developing decision maps, updating them as each decision is executed, and assessing results should add only a small amount of work to a typical project.

You may, nevertheless, want some help to get started. Here are a few ideas on where you may find outside help of most value:

Coaching

Coaching is being employed increasingly by managers to help build or strengthen skills in a specific area of need. There are many kinds of coaches today, including a few "decision" coaches. Whatever the flavor, the coach you need should be able to work with you, and possibly your management team as well, to implement each of the above steps until you have enough familiarity with the process to handle it subsequently on your own. You may ask the coach to prepare initial decision maps and give you early assistance with updating. You may also want to have the coach provide guidance on metrics suitable for each decision situation.

Workshops

You may be able to locate a workshop on decision-making that follows this approach to a reasonable degree. A suitable workshop should be able to take you through real or example decisions and offer a system for mapping, tracking, and evaluating. One disadvantage of external workshops is that they typically cannot address your own decisions since doing so may require disclosure to the group of sensitive or confidential information. Setting up an in-house workshop with your own managers may be a better approach. In this case, you may only need the assistance of a workshop leader with experience in facilitating decision processes.

Management Tools

There may be some management tools, increasingly available in Web-based form, that will support a process of this kind. A suitable toolset should help you:

þ Organize, summarize and present all important decision-related information

þ Set decision success criteria and rank action options against these criteria

þ Track implementation progress and revisit decision aspects as new information is obtained

þ Evaluate results against success criteria.

You may find that some combination of these resources will work best for your organization.

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