How can a team make decisions effectively and quickly?
Teams are the best vehicles for analysing key decisions, especially those involving a great deal of uncertainty and requiring commitment from a wide group of stakeholders. Teams can profitably spend time developing a more systematic and rational approach to decision making, replacing assumptions, groupthink and the many analysis traps that have cost huge amounts of money in the past.

Case Studies: Developing Decision Making

We were asked to assist a product development team in a large corporation had around 20 members, which had members from the US and the UK. Prior incarnations of the group had been attempting to resolve a particular development issue for several months, and the new group inherited this problem.

They focused on the work issue they'd been trying to resolve. The team had a tendency to debate everything to death! Discussions would continue for ages even around issues that had been agreed! One that hadn't, however, kept bouncing back and forth, with ideas and counter-ideas. The leadership members were encouraged to make more solid proposals: summarising the essence of the disagreements and pushing for consensus - the best compromise. It turned out that the real sticking point for the team were their behaviours and approaches, rather than completely polarised beliefs. They continued to press for closure, and they managed to complete the decision.