Productivity – Decision Making

[Anonymous]

The team has clear and efficient decision making processes, which have proven effective over time.

[Alexis Phillips]

Tips and questions about Decision-Making on teams:
– What is clear decision-making on this team? Examples?

– What is efficient decision-making on this team? Examples?

– How do you know if decisions are effective? What happens when they are not?

– Work on a specific area where the decision-making process is murky.

– What is one area where the decision-making process is quite successful? What can you learn from that as a team?

– What are different decision-making styles you have seen on teams?

– There are various roles and approaches to use depending on the type of decision. If the role and approach are unclear, there are disconnects.
For a particular decision:
– How is the decision-maker identified?
– How is the decision approach identified?
– How is the decision-maker and approach communicated to the team?
– How is the decision communicated to the team? By whom?

[Anonymous]

Cartesian Questions: Decision-Making Tool

A simple, yet powerful tool often taught in NLP training and which I have successfully used in coaching sessions, Cartesian Questions have the goal of guiding the individual (or team) toward uncovering different perspectives, expanded opportunities and new ideas around a decision to be made.

For example, if the decision is whether to pursue Opportunity X or not, the coach can ask the team to brainstorm responses to the four questions below. To get the team to dig deeper, the coach asks ‘What else?’, ‘What else?’, ‘What else?’ until the individual or team can come up with no more. Then the team moves on to the next question.

Ask four questions, in this sequence:

1. What will happen if we do pursue X?
2. What will happen if we don’t pursue X?
3. What won’t happen if we do pursue X?
4. What won’t happen if we don’t pursue X?

Often responses are documented in a table format, similar to this example, changing the ‘I’ to ‘we’ for a team.

In this way, the situation is examined from several angles and a more informed decision can be reached.

Followup questions can be asked upon completion of the exercise, such as:

• What surprised you?
• What have you learned about the team from this experience?
• What would you like to explore more?
• How do the responses impact the team’s motivation to move forward?
• What team values are reflected in your responses?

Additional information:
http://www.thecoachingtoolscompany.com/cartesian-questions-tool-and-how-to-use/

I’m curious to hear if others have used this tool with teams and what did (or did not) work well. Most of my experience is using it in individual coaching.

[Anonymous]

If you could look at my calendar you would see quite a bit of time allocated to doing nothing…or so it seems. 30 min slots are greyed out each day without anything happening.

Before you shake your head: these slots are there for a purpose. They reflect buffers without meetings. Time that I need; To think about pending decisions, my processes, my team and how to allocate work to which team members. I need these buffers to do my job well.

According to general understanding Productivity in business means working effectively to reach the organization’s goals and to make the right decisions. So far so good. But how does this work for coaches or any other self-sufficient managers that deal with high workloads and teams in environments expecting you to be as lean as possible?

It is often quicker to solve your team’s problems than to coach them. You have gathered years of experience in solving issues and the short-term relief of having solved yet another problem can be more rewarding than spending hours of time with your team coaching them to develop and be self-sufficient.

With organisations becoming larger, more global and thus more complex, the frequency of issues to be solved increase. At the same time, being a leader, you are expected to develop from problem solving to coaching and from operational to more strategic tasks.
Unless you coach others to address challenges themselves and unless you set up your team as a living, thinking system you will struggle to keep up with the changing and fast speed environment you are in.

You want to schedule time to think about how people tick, what their drivers are and how this impacts team dynamics. Instead, you are jumping from one meeting to the next which neither helps yourself to be effective nor your team to grow and support you to reach the organisation’s goals and create sustainability.

My tips are very simple:
1) ask a TCI coach to do this work with you
2) schedule time in your calendar for doing nothing else but thinking about strategic topics and how to coach and grow your team. Doing this in a systematic way will prove to be one of the best Productivity tools you have ever experienced. Try it and let me know me if it works!

[Author]

Posts