Communication and Decisions (2 of 2)

Many of us prefer frank, open, direct transparency; we are attracted to the concept of keeping a decision log into which major decisions are entered before they are made and then recorded along with alternatives, context, desired result, vision, etc. At first blush such a decision log seems like a great idea. One can go back to these logs to see what the decision makers were thinking and how they arrived at their decision. Even better is that folks who want to become involved in decisions by advocating for one alternative or another can subscribe to changes in the log document (e.g. using watch in Atlassian or notifications in Google sheets). These interested stakeholders can contact the decision owner and other stakeholders to advocate for their preferred option. My personal experiences implementing such a system have been extremely disappointing.  Many decisions, such as who gets promoted (and more importantly who does not) are very sensitive. Other decisions, such as organization changes, additions or reductions in staff, and other personnel decisions are confidential. "Build versus Buy" business decisions for upgrading an in-house system are always controversial.

Many people prefer to complain after the fact instead of communicating their point of view before the decision is made (Failure is an orphan).  Sometimes there are stakeholders who have valuable input for a decision but are too shy or too busy to make their ideas known; decision owners should proactively solicit points of view either 1:1 or in a meeting if such an effort is worth the time and if the decision will have a big impact.

Starting with the questions from this book (not a good book) I have created the following checklist of questions a person or small team might want to  consider when they are discussing and solving problems or discussing alternatives (e.g. a design review) for a decision and some action they will take.     Note there should always be a  "so that" clause in the answer to describe the result and success vision as shown in these examples.

 

 

Question	Example
What are we trying to accomplish? What is the desired result or outcome and why is it good?	We are trying to prevent the customer from falling into this confused error state in our app. We want the customer to understand and select the appropriate option so that she can complete the larger task in her workflow for her business purpose.
What are expectations for next steps?	We shall create, ship, and run A/B tests of alternative wording in the app on a stratified sample of customers to measure if we can reduce customer confusion and errors in the app so that we can gain confidence in shipping our fix.
What should we not do?	We do not want to shift right to customer service or app training because we want our app to be intuitive in first use for absolute beginners.
What could go wrong? If something goes wrong, what should we do?	Our online A/B testing may measure only this point in time or season and fail for future customers. Our new experience may cause more confusion and have the opposite effect as the result desired. We may be spending time on the wrong problem (priorities) and fail to deliver more important bug fixes or revenue. If there is testing bandwidth, we should re-test each quarter so that we verify the fix continues working. We should verify priorities with business owners so that we maximize value delivery to customers.
What is the status update frequency? What stakeholder feedback is expected by when? How & when are surprises communicated to stakeholders? If you were in one of the roles receiving this information rather than delivering it, what else would you want to know?	Trello cards updated daily with re-estimates of time to milestone; weekly status reports with JIRA links to stakeholders; we have no separate update email to stakeholders so that we concentrate on work and automate the communication. As a stakeholder receiving confusing updates in the trello cards that are tracking progress on this decision I know I should add a comment asking for clarity on confusing information so that I can stay informed and aligned. Surprises are sent via SMS and live meetings.

Obviously, many of these factors are not applicable or not important to some decisions.  However, prompting yourself to consider these criteria can be helpful, even with smaller decisions.

When an employee engagement survey or executive talks about "decision making process" remember it is a secret code word for "communication" and remind everyone to stay alert and remind themselves when they are taking some action that will affect others.  If people are not responding "no" to the question in meetings, "Are we making a decision?" at least once during a meeting, you are not surfacing that question frequently enough.  It is also important to be very proactive in communication about decisions. Do not expect anyone (ever) to search for information about your decisions.  Add them to the notifications or "watchers" lists yourself.