Effective teams make timely decisions together by h2h Lead Consultant, Jerry Scott
It was 7:00 PM. The European leadership team I was observing had been going at it since 10:00 in the morning, having all flown in since the early hours. They’d overrun and were well behind on the agenda. As a result, they decided to start the meeting the next day an hour earlier. I noted that this was their first and only decision from 9 hours of work together.
If you’re part of our leadership team, it can be useful to measure your effectiveness by how many decisions you are making together. Of course, we also come together for other reasons such as information sharing, developing strategy, collaboration, and problem solving. But as a leadership team, if we’re not making decisions, we’re probably not driving the business forward.
If you’d like your team to be making faster and better decisions together, you may want to consider some of the following tactics.
- Agenda
The team I mentioned before had a very professional agenda. 2 pages long, it covered everything from operational matters for the here and now through to strategic planning for the next 5 years. Whilst all areas were touched on, many ended up being added to the agenda for the next meeting for follow up. They needed to prioritise. A useful starting point is to make sure that decisions that the team need to take together are put firmly at the centre of any agenda. This may well require us to sacrifice other items and find other ways of dealing with them in the sidelines. For absolute focus, make sure that the decision that is required to be made is stated clearly on the agenda itself.
- Proposal
For any decision that needs to be made there should be a proposal that’s been prepared in advance. This may be by a specific team member or a sub team that’s worked on this before the meeting. They should be prepared to present a brief and compelling positioning for the decision that is being proposed. Supporting analysis should be shared in advance in a pre-read.
- Pre-consult
In preparation for the meeting, the owner of the decision required should be pre-consulting with each of the team. As a result, they will know all the different concerns and points of view represented by different members. This enables them to present the full complexity of the decision required where every team member feels that their views have been considered and represented. Ideally, there will be no surprises in the meeting.
- Chair
During the agenda item, the team member making the proposal will effectively facilitate conversation. It’s helpful for someone else to act as chair during this agenda item. Often this falls to the leader of the team. But if they have a significant role to play in the discussion it may be better for someone else to take this role. They hold the team to account for both how they work the decision, and also to ensure that the decision is made in the agreed time frame.
- Visualise
Having done all this good work far too often teams then discover later that the decision and hasn’t followed through on – more than likely because not everyone agreed with the decision. Ensure absolute clarity by writing the decision that has been made in the meeting visually so that everybody can see and agree to it. Scan the room and if you doubt anyone’s buy in, call it.
I hope some of the brief thoughts here help you to drive decision making in your team. If you would like to find out more about how h2h can help you develop your team or teams in your organisation, contact us at enquiries@h2h.uk.com .
