Your business needs

Research shows that companies who are faster at decision-making are also quicker to implement the determined measures, bring about the desired change and reap the rewards for doing so.

However, business leaders often find their decision-making process and implementation of outcomes is (far) too slow. Strategies thereby suffer from delayed and/or insufficient execution and it takes (too) long to achieve the desired business impact.

The decision-making process is essential to so many things, it can be likened to a company’s heartbeat. And just like a heart in a human body, it needs the right conditions to perform well. In the context of a company, the decision-making process is strongly influenced by the culture that surrounds it. If you’re going to accelerate your business process improvement, you first have to make sure your decision-making culture is in the right place.

Research by McKinsey shows that only 20% of companies actually excel at decision making. This means a huge 80% have room for improvement. Improvement that starts with understanding the decision-making process, so the required change can take place.

Our answer

Assess the current decision making process
One of our core beliefs is that change across connected business areas can be driven by strongly focussing on one or more key business processes. Once the relevant processes have been identified (which in some organisations is a project in itself!) we’ll perform an analysis of your decision-making for the selected key processes. This will include evaluating your existing decision-making operating system (meeting structures, KPIs, actions, etc), understanding how stakeholders are involved and verifying the existing authority levels, escalation rules and informal decision-making.

Organisation and role clarity
Clarity around how company organisation and various roles feed into decision-making is essential for enabling both decisions and implementation to happen quickly. We therefore evaluate these in relation to the (previously identified) key business processes. Our work also includes an assessment of incentives structures (the “follow-the-money” principle).

Accountability
Even when everything is in place in a technical and/or organisational sense, decision-making can still be hindered by a lack of accountability inherent in the current company culture. We therefore also assess accountability levels through online surveys and interviews.

To ensure acceptance of the conclusions and address any blind spots among leaders, we provide data to support all the findings.

These insights clarify which changes are necessary to both the decision-making culture and the business operating system. A leadership contract, which documents the required change, is also put in place to ensure commitment and buy-in from leaders (at the various organisational levels). This creates and implements transition to our accountability principles.

Our solutions

  • Operating systems evaluation (IDEX/IWEX/IMEX)
  • Organisational/role clarity
  • Accountability
  • CAP