6 Principles to guide your decision-making process

Businesses are constantly making decisions. Faced with unique circumstances, they might have to make some tough ones. Decision making isn’t easy, and some people avoid making decisions at all costs. Avoidance is a decision in itself and there are times when the outcome from no decision can be worse.

Here are six principles to guide your decision-making process.

1. Be Consistent. Organisational decision making is a process. Following consistent processes and procedures for reaching and communicating decisions, helps people know what to expect from the organisation.
2. Support organisational values. Any decision a company makes should align with the company’s core values. When the company makes resolutions that don’t appear to align, people will question it. If the company can explain it, that’s OK, but if they can’t, then it’s only human nature is to suspect the worst.
3. Align individual and company goals. Organisational decisions also need to be able to align with employee goals. Deciding something about the company will usually impact performance goals. which then become the employee’s goals.
4. Make decisions future focused. You should be talking about what you would like to see in the future not rewriting a policy about a past event.
5. Communicate decisions in a positive way. When it comes to company communications, don’t create “no” policies. Organisations should communicate what employees “can” do and how they can be more successful.
6. Assign accountability. When decisions are made, using a model like RACI (responsible, accountability, consult and inform) can help improve the implementation of the decision. It’s not enough just to make the decision. Or to simply communicate it. The organisation needs to make sure that what has been decided actually happens.

Whether organisations make decisions that are perceived as brilliant and loved by all or sad, awful and likely to upset most, companies need to make sure that what you decide is consistent with the organisational belief system, communicated clearly and implemented properly.  Having a few principles in place can help companies reach consistent decisions so that, even when the conclusion isn’t loved, everyone can understand it.