Making Difficult Decisions

How to be decisive and get the business done

Peter J. A. Shaw

• Publisher: Capstone
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781841127422
• eBook ISBN: 9781907293863
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

You are faced with so many difficult decisions. Often your decision making seems random. It can be swayed by different situations and emotions. You need to be more rigorous in the way you make decisions and yet you have very little time to do so. Experience from others who have made tough decisions and a framework to help you do so would be invaluable.
The courage to make decisions is sometimes a bit elusive. It is difficult to find the calmness to be able to make and live with those decisions. There is so much that can be learned from the experience of others. After working through this book you will have the courage of your convictions and the ability to make difficult decisions count.
The book sets out a framework for making difficult decisions that has been tried and tested. It has been used successfully in one-to-one coaching with senior leaders in both the public, private and voluntary sectors. The framework is built on the following strands: Clarity; Conviction; Courage; and Communication.

Part 1

The 4Cs of making difficult decisions

This section of the book covers the four key strands of clarity, conviction, courage and communication and illustrates a set of practical steps in respect of each theme.

These themes cover:

• clarity: ensuring objectivity about the issue, the context and the circumstances;

• conviction: bringing intuition, values and trained judgement;

• courage: turning belief into action to build next steps;

• communication: continually listening, engaging and persuading.

It looks at the interrelationship between clarity and conviction drawing from the experience of leaders in a wide variety of contexts suggesting an approach to balancing these different dimensions and then looks in turn at each theme.

In working through the 4Cs questions might be:

• Do the 4Cs ring true for me?

• How good am I at getting the balance right between clarity and conviction?

• How do I assess my courage and ability to communicate effectively in taking difficult decisions?

• How do I want to strengthen my capabilities in each area?

• Do I think the 4Cs miss out any crucial areas?

Chapter 1

Balancing clarity and conviction

At the heart of effective decision-making is balancing clarity and conviction. The natural starting point for different individuals will be at different points on this spectrum. What can we learn from the experience of others in balancing clarity and conviction and how can we develop an approach in ourselves which takes forward the best of both dimensions?

This chapter looks at various perspectives on the balance between clarity and conviction and then sets out an illustrative set of questions to help weigh up the balance between clarity and conviction applicable in a wide range of situations.

The stark reality

How often have you been faced with making a decision on the basis of limited evidence? You are balancing facts and your sense of the right next steps. It could be one of the following scenarios.

• You have a purchasing decision to make. You have weighed up all the evidence but you are uncomfortable about the organisation which comes out top on the factual analysis.

• You have a recruitment decision to make and are confident that one candidate is the best candidate although you cannot be precise about why this person feels so much better than the other candidates.

• You have a decision to make about whether to send a critical e-mail. You feel emotionally that a message needs to be sent. Do you hold back and reassess the facts in the cold light of day before you finally decide whether or not to send the e-mail?

• You have a major strategic decision to make about the use of resources. You have loads of documentation, but you are in danger of not seeing the wood for the trees. Your gut instinct is clear, but is there a risk that you go with your gut instinct when working hard through the analytic data is the right next step.

These decisions are of different orders of magnitude. The recruitment and strategic resourcing decisions will have major long-term consequences. The e-mail may be the cause of short-term angst but with no long-term consequences. Yet in a busy day your mind may be moving from one type of decision to another. Some may seem more difficult than others during the day, while at 4am the relativities might seem very different.

For all of these decisions there is an oscillation between facts and feelings. There are elements of clarity and elements of conviction bouncing up against each other in your brain. So how do you balance clarity and conviction in a wide range of different contexts?

Smart choices

In their book entitled Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Life Decisions, (Broadway Books, New York, 1999) Hammond, Keeney and Raiffa talk of effective decision-making processes fulfilling six criteria:

• It focuses on what is important;

• It is logical and consistent;

• It acknowledges both subjective and objective factors and blends analytical with intuitive thinking;

• It requires only as much information and analysis as is necessary to resolve a particular dilemma;

• It encourages and guides the gathering of relevant information and informed opinion;

• It is straightforward, reliable, easy to use and flexible.

The authors see addressing these criteria as relevant for decisions that are either major or minor. They suggest eight keys to effective decision-making:

1. Work on the right decision problem.

2. Specify your objectives.

3. Create imaginative alternatives.

4. Understand the consequences.

5. Grapple with your trade-offs.

6. Clarify your uncertainties.

7. Think hard about your risk tolerance.

8. Consider linked decisions.

The authors set out a very rational approach dealing with a range of different practical decisions. Their thrust is on as much objectivity as possible with personal preference only playing a limited part. The difficulty is that sometimes it is not possible to systemise decision-making in the way advocated in the book. But the eight keys above provide a helpful starting point.

Living with reality

This section records the perspective of three leaders from very different worlds about living with reality. Nicky Munroe, a former Director General within the Scottish Executive, talks about coping with decision-making in a situation which is neither orderly nor straightforward and where decisions are messy and only partial information is available. Her perspective is,

‘The leader has to be increasingly good at coping with ambiguity. The first time a major decision has to be handled which is not straightforward you can feel a bad leader. But everyone is going to hit these hard situations. In a world of ambiguity, leadership is about having to take difficult decisions in difficult situations. It is right to take account of a mix of rational and emotional factors.’

Sometimes the focus has to be at the clarity end. Lord Justice John Thomas, a senior High Court Judge, talks of being very careful about ‘gut feelings’. His perspective is,

‘Gut feelings are often wrong. You need to think them through very carefully. Setting aside thinking time is important. Never make a decision when cross. I think better under pressure: you need to understand in what circumstances you think in the most effective way. When I have difficult decisions to take I like to talk to people and by articulating things you illustrate what the problem is. Look at the upsides and downsides: what is the downside of taking a particular decision. Always sleep on it: this perspective is a product of seeing lawyers make hasty decisions and then regret it. Work out how you are going to put over a decision: see how it is going to operate practically. You need courage to face your people and explain the difficult decisions. In many cases you may think that they will want to be critical, but if you talk to them they will listen. If you don’t face them they will grumble and the issues will get out of proportion.’

Chris Banks from his perspective as a senior executive in the food and drink industry readily acknowledges that instinct does play a big role. His perspective is people in business are paid to act on their own judgement and to make decisions, he recognises the danger of individuals using data that supports their conclusions. Chris sees the good organisation trying to slow down decision-making to enable managers to ask better questions in order to get below inbuilt prejudices. He sees the merits of decisions by many companies spending time retraining people to reduce their prejudices. His perspective is that,

‘An important issue is your mental model for decision-making: you need to make quick judgements in many businesses, so you need to be trained so that you are clear what mental model you are using.’

Balancing clarity and conviction where information is partial

Leaders are always wrestling with situations where information is partial. Looking at a range of examples can give insights into how best individuals balance clarity and conviction. Examples below include a government minister, a Crown Prosecutor, a health and safety inspector, the chief executive of a European business, a UK ambassador, a leader of major infrastructure projects, a hospital surgeon in Africa and the chief executive of a national organisation and a supermarket junior manager. These are live examples of individuals facing and coping with the balance between clarity and conviction.

A government minister

Stephen Timms from his experience as a UK government minister talks of his role in making decisions when he receives detailed advice. He believes it is important to give a clear direction of travel at each stage. Where there are steps he wants to see happen it is his responsibility to tell people so that there is no lack of clarity about the next steps. He says that when he overturns a decision it is often where his gut feeling tells him there is something wrong. His perspective is that turning over a decision should not happen very often because of the importance of giving clear steers in advance. But when he receives recommendations, testing whether they are right involves both clarity of thinking, and also a gut feeling which is based on long experience of the effect of different types of actions.

Stephen tells the story of when he was asked to speak at a rally in support of a family who felt victimised. There was strong local feeling and the organisers were keen that he was there. He felt it was the right decision to accept the invitation but the decision was difficult and not comfortable. The reasons influencing his decision were both intellectual and intuitive. His intuition told him it was a bad idea not to be there: it was far better to be seen to be there and able to express a view. Eighty per cent of the decision was based on gut feeling. He tested this intuitive feeling by asking a number of people for their perspectives including both local people and a ministerial colleague. He felt a strong moral obligation to speak at the rally and took what he believed to be the right decision having checked out his intuitive judgement with some key people.

A Crown Prosecutor

Senior lawyers are in the business of weighing up the facts and then reaching a judgement about what they believe is right based often on conflicting evidence. When the police refer a case to the Crown Prosecution Service the decision to be taken is: does the CPS charge the defendant or not? When the issues are clear there is no problem about taking a decision. Decisions are based on the code of practice for Crown Prosecutors: a decision to prosecute a case has to pass both the evidential test and the public interest test. The options are to decide to charge, to decide there is insufficient evidence or it is not in the public interest to proceed, or to seek further information.

The Crown Prosecutor has to make a decision based on whatever facts they have available. Charles talks of making decisions based on his perspective following the weighing up of evidence. He says,

‘You will have often seen the scenarios before. You will understand the pattern but you are always conscious that you have to check that you are drawing on wisdom and not prejudice. My experience is that I draw from my own experience and the counsel of others in talking the case through with them and drawing on their experience. You ask the question would a tribunal, properly directed, be more likely to convict than not?’

Charles says that the steps going on in his mind when he takes a decision include:

• what are the points that strike him from the initial read of the material?

• the quality of the content and the statements;

• the first impressions about the reliability of those involved;

• the relevance of past legal cases;

• reflections from previous similar situations;

• what are the key features of the evidence on which the case hinges?

• what are the potential defences that may be raised at trial?

The danger is that a request for more information triggers further information which is extraneous: if things get delayed it could mean losing the case because witnesses are lost. The test is how often does this further information change the mind of the prosecutor and what is the diminishing return from further information if the time lapse means that a case might not be brought to trial.

Deciding whether or not to prosecute is an interesting example of weighing up evidence when there is limited clarity. The prosecutor inevitably has to apply an intuitive or judgemental test to the evidence and then assess their judgement. Whilst the Crown Prosecutor determines whether there is sufficient evidence to charge a defendant, the ultimate decision as to guilt is a matter for the court.

A health and ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Other books by Peter Shaw
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1 - The 4Cs of making difficult decisions
• Part 2 - Taking forward making difficult decisions
• Part 3 - Making difficult decisions in particular circumstances
• Selected bibliography
• Index