Point Lookout: a free weekly publication of Chaco Canyon Consulting
Volume 14, Issue 26;   June 25, 2014: Deciding to Change: Choosing

Deciding to Change: Choosing

by

When organizations decide to change what they do, the change sometimes requires that they change how they make decisions, too. That part of the change is sometimes overlooked, in part, because it affects most the people who make decisions. What can we do about this?
Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting at the South Pole

Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting at the South Pole, December 16, 1911. The photographer was Olav Bjaaland.

When Amundsen and his party of eight all told departed their base camp for the pole on September 8, 1911, they departed too early. Forced to return in a hasty retreat on account of severe cold, they sustained some injuries from frostbite, and lost a few dogs. But the greatest damage came from the conflict that ensued, and the outright rebellion of Hjalmar Johansen, who openly questioned Amundsen's fitness as a leader. Back at base camp, Amundsen was able to treat the injuries, order equipment changes, and reconfigure the pole party to a smaller group, excluding Johansen. Also excluded was Kristrian Prestrud, who by then had realized that he was not up to the challenges of the polar journey. Amundsen also asked Jørgen Stubberud to go with Johansen and Prestrud on an Eastern expedition during the summer while the polar assault was underway. Finally, he carefully polled the party about the decision to depart. When the polar party departed on October 19, after several days of weather delays, they were a smaller party, better equipped and supplied, and starting almost six weeks deeper into Spring. These changes came about as a result of Amundsen's application of three of the practices advocated here: exclusion, inclusion, and retrospectives.

The photo is taken from Amundsen's book about the expedition, : The South Pole.

When organizations decide to do something different from what they've been doing, the changes they undertake might involve changing more than what they do. Sometimes they must also restructure the way they make decisions. For example, the relative importance of software engineers and actuaries in insurance companies has changed significantly in the past 50 years. Although software engineering is more important today in such organizations than it once was, one can debate whether the political power of the people engaged in software engineering today parallels the importance of their profession in executing the mission of the organization.

Elective change in organizations sometimes exposes conflicts of interest between the interests of the organization and the interests of the people who must make the decision to change. In some cases, this conflict of interest is resolved not in the favor of the organization, but in favor of the personal interests of the decision makers. When that happens, the organization remains stuck on paths that lead to stagnation, contraction, and — possibly — bankruptcy.

What can we do about this? Here are four suggestions for enhancing decision quality.

Recusal
A pattern of participation in decisions that affect the personal interests of the decision makers is a performance issue. In politics and jurisprudence, excusing oneself from such participation is called recusal. The practice is rare even there, but with the exception of certain professional standards, it's almost totally absent from organizational life. Would not organizations that succeed in incorporating recusal into their decision processes gain significant advantages in decision quality?
Inclusion
The dual of recusal is inclusion. In most organizations, the same group of decision makers makes all the big decisions. From time to time, they do seek advice from specialists, but the specialists' role is advisory only — they rarely have decision authority. Are there not classes of decisions that would be improved by including some people who are customarily excluded from decision making?
Decision process risk management
Even among A pattern of participation in
decisions that affect the
personal interests of the
decision makers is
a performance issue
organizations that recognize the importance of risk management, risk management practice tends to emphasize what the organizations does, rather than how the organization makes decisions. Certainly all organizations make bad decisions once in a while. Can we not use risk management principles to protect ourselves from these mistakes?
Retrospectives
Most important, perhaps, is a practice often called "lessons learned," or retrospectives. Retrospectives help us avoid repeating our own mistakes — or the mistakes of others. Although widely used in the lower reaches of the org chart, they are much less common at high levels. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that requiring self-examination of others is easier than asking it of oneself?

Which of these practices do you recognize in the decision-making process of your own organization? Which are absent from it? First in this series  Go to top Top  Next issue: Seventeen Guidelines About Workplace Bullying  Next Issue

101 Tips for Managing ChangeIs your organization embroiled in Change? Are you managing a change effort that faces rampant cynicism, passive non-cooperation, or maybe even outright revolt? Read 101 Tips for Managing Change to learn how to survive, how to plan and how to execute change efforts to inspire real, passionate support. Order Now!

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See also Organizational Change and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

A meeting that's probably a bit too largeComing March 20: Top Ten Ways to Make Meetings More Effective
Meetings are just about everybody's least favorite part of working in organizations. We can do much better if only we take a few simple steps to improve them. The big one: publish the agenda in advance. Here are nine other steps to improve meetings. Available here and by RSS on March 20.
An informal meeting in a loungeAnd on March 27: Allocating Action Items
From time to time in meetings we discover tasks that need doing. We call them "action items." And we use our list of open action items as a guide for tracking the work of the group. How we decide who gets what action item can sometimes affect our success. Available here and by RSS on March 27.

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