Group Decision Making

Group Decision Making

    As leaders and managers, we frequently encounter problems that may be bigger than us and require more than us as individuals to solve.  We must look forward and determine if these situations would be better to call in a team of people to attempt to solve the problem.  While this is more common at certain levels of management than others, these strategies can be applied in many different areas with as large or as small of a team as you wish to use to conduct them.

    There are some intrinsic benefits as well as disadvantages to using groups to approach problem solving and decision making.  We need to keep in mind some generalizations about employing a group to tackle issues.

Pros and Cons to Using a Group

    A group may be great in that it allows us a larger amount of knowledge overall.  We can tap into multiple different perspectives on issues, stimulate one another, and engage in meaningful discussion while building relationships.  Using a group usually gives us better understanding of the decision in the end because of the exploratory process during the exchange of communication during the group meeting.  I would agree that there is also a deeper commitment to the solution of the problem so long as a real consensus results from the conclusion.  For the members of a group working on the problem, there usually exists a feeling of one-ness or belonging that brings members of the group together.

    On the opposite side of the coin, there are some disadvantages to using a group to problem solve or make decisions.  Groups take time to put together, and even more time to come to an agreement.  The time it takes for a group to come to a conclusion is usually exponentially longer than it would take an individual to make a decision.  For this reason, we need to make sure that we select the correct situation to employ a group.  Groupthink is a term we use to describe when all members of a group agree with each other regardless of their personal beliefs.  Groupthink can undermine the ability of a group to do what it set out to do.  Another common disadvantage of employing a group is that a few tend to frequently dominate or intimidate the discussion which prevents others from really being heard.

    We should also explore the tendency for a group to engage in goal displacement, where the initial goal of the group meeting is replaced by another goal, which may be as simple as winning an argument that arose during the meeting between two coworkers.  We need to avoid such things as this as well as satisficing, or, settling for a sub-optimal decision and not allowing the group to produce the most optimum result.

Analyzing the Cons

    As we can see there are a lot of cons to creating a group forum to take on a problem or issue.  What this means is that when we decide to employ a group to engage a problem, we need to do so strategically and take advantage of possible benefits.  The benefits listed above for using a group need to be maximized, and the group chosen needs to be chosen with exploiting those benefits in mind.  We must exploit the benefit of having a larger pool of knowledge by choosing group members that each contribute something unique to the group.

    We must minimize the cons when we begin our journey into using a group by 

understanding that groups can be less efficient because they take more time to come to a decision than a single person would.  We need to realize that the size of the group will play a direct role in the quality of the decisions made by the group, as well as the communication contributed by each member.  We cannot allow overconfidence to appear as a burden on our group, with the members going into the meeting thinking that they need to contribute less because, after all, a group is working on it that could afford them an opportunity to slack.

Considering the Group Approach

    A group approach should be considered when it can clearly increase the quality of the outcome or decision.  We must honestly ask ourselves when we encounter a decision, “are we able to make a quality decision without the help of others?”  If there is no quality perk, then why wouldn’t we just make the decision ourselves?  We also need to take acceptance of the decision into consideration.  Often a decision is more widely accepted if more than one person is involved in its conception, and people may feel like jumping on board if they know that a group of people took time to come together to reach it.

    There is also a developmental factor that should be considered when we are thinking about applying a group approach to solving a problem or making a decision.  We need to ask ourselves if there is opportunity for the development of the organization or the individuals of the group.  We should take some time on this part of considering the group approach, because often the development of the leaders of an organization may be more of a benefit of the group forums than the conclusion or the reason for meeting in the first place.  This affords us a multi-shot strategy for organizational improvement in a lot of cases.

The Take Away

    I really enjoy the discussion and comradery involved in a group setting, and I enjoy being a part of group meetings.  I think it is beneficial to team members and leaders alike to feel like they are considered when an important decision is being made.  I think too little focus is put on the development of the team, organization, and individuals when we allow a foster of group thinking to be created.  Too often we focus on the cons to using a group and for that reason we avoid using one.  While I think it may be silly to employ a group to make every little decision, we need to have a consistent group dialogue tackling some important decisions along many different fronts.  There should be common forums where groups meet to make decisions that may be outside of the box, and that is fine, because this still takes advantage of the developmental benefits of allowing a group to engage in the decision making and problem-solving process.

Experiencing Failure

Experiencing Failure as a Leader

Today I will outline my thoughts on the topic of failure and how to deal with failure as well as outline ways to cope with failure as a leader.

What is Failure?

    As leaders, failure can be simplified to any situational outcome where the team does not meet its goal.  This isn't an exclusive definition, and while many flavors of failure exist, this will be the topic of today.  A general responsibility of being a leader is recognizing any failure within the group to be our own.  Team failure is leadership failure, and this statement is never untrue.  Failure can be generalized to the specific goals related to short term delegated activities, or to the long term goals related to the KPI's of an organization.  Failure may be a downward trend,  an unfortunate event, or just a bad day.  Failure may not be in the metrics, but just in the mood.  A Mirriam-Webster Dictionary definition of failure is "a lack of success in some effort. : a situation or occurrence in which something does not work as it should."  Obviously, "working as it should" is subject to interpretation, but usually failure is pretty clear right?  Unfortunately no.  Sometimes failure goes unnoticed, and this is where it gets dangerous.

How to Deal With Failure?

    Failure itself isn't detrimental.  There are many teaching on failing into success.  The importance of any failure is what we take from it, and that taking must be positive.  If we ever experience failure and have thrown our hands up, given up, or blamed others, we have done the only things that we should never do as leaders experiencing failure.  The keys to successfully deal with failure are to recognize, analyze, learn, and grow.

Recognizing Failure:

    To recognize failure means to be aware that something did not work as it should.  We must first understand how it should have worked and understand that the outcome does not match the expectation.  Being consciously aware at this step is successfully completing it.

Analyzing Failure:

    To analyze failure means to have understood that things did not work as they should and then to ask why.  There are many different methods to this, including root cause analysis (RCA), among many others.  The endgame of analysis is to determine what failed and why it failed.

Learning from Failure:

    To learn from failure is to determine what failed and why, and then identify things that should have gone differently in order for the failure to be a success.  This can be re-worded and read as "what we could have done differently in order to produce success."  This step perhaps is the most important because it is in this step that removes all the negativity from failure and actually transforms it into a positive occurrence.

Grow from Failure:

    Growth from failure results from the implementation of the truths that we have learned from the analysis of the failure.  This is the ultimate endgame of any failure, because not only have we experienced success from learning from our failure, but here we demonstrate that we have successfully learned how to react to it.

Anecdotal Story from My Experiences with Failure:

    It is no secret that I have achieved my success with leadership as a blue-collar factory laborer in the field of logistics.  I worked my way up into management through promotions.  As a manager of a departmental team, I lead a team of individuals to push product out to carriers which then deliver that product to customers.  My success is measured by a variety of metrics that record how much my team and I actually move.  On one particular night it seemed as if things just were not moving.  The end of the night came, low and behold, the numbers produced were low as expected.

    This means many things, including recognizing that we did not do as well as planned, determining why, reporting this to my superiors, and then trying again in the future.  The secret to growing from this failure is knowing that when I try again in the future, I am going to implement different strategies to turn the course of the failure before it starts.  In my specific situation I recognized that one of the root causes of the failure may lie in my teams general knowledge of the software involved, and in order to grow I would have to foster an atmosphere of learning and teaching so that all of my team members were up to speed on how to properly use the software required to do the job.

    My implementation of the growth phase of failure was a monumental success.  I identified key team members whose ability to learn quickly was slightly higher than the others.  I focused my time on them and communicated to them my intentions for this focus of attention as well as my expectations that they would not just sit on the knowledge.  I watched as I planted seeds of information and those seeds grew and spread to the entire team.  Over time as the team learned and information spread it dawned on me that there was positive growth from a failure that could not have happened without the failure.  Metrics trended up and new records were set.  Failure was the root cause of success.

Definition Explained: KPI

    An acronym that we should know as leaders of an organization stands for "Key Performance Indicator".  This may seem self explanatory, but most often is not understood.  Most look at KPIs and read goals, but goals are really the next step of identifying a KPI.  Knowing your key performance indicators means to understand the metrics and numbers that you are looking at as well as understanding what it means for them to rise or fall.  From here we can deduce that after every KPI should come a goal, and that goal itself becomes key.  A key performance indicator for operations may be how many units were manufactured during a certain period, while a key performance indicator for supply or procurement may be the difference in units from running a completely lean operation.  KPI's are industry or organization specific, in that, they are unique to the goals of the industry or organization.

    

Root Cause Analysis

Root Cause Analysis:

    Many times we are challenged with solving problems and answering questions we may know nothing about.  Solving problems that we are clue-less about is a skill that anyone can learn, and learning this skill will make it seem as if you know and understand things that you really do/did not.  Often after you perform this, you will understand the situation much better than you had previously understood it.  I believe that there is a clear process to go from the introduction to any problem to understanding what exactly it is that we have to solve in order to operate optimally.  This problem solving skill translates to many areas of life.  I will outline this process below as I understand it.

1) Understand and interpret the problem
2) Reduce the problem to causal circumstances (simply ask why and answer yourself)
3) Further refine causal circumstances (keep asking why) until you arrive at redundant and/or recurring results
4) Re-interpret this root cause and begin the problem solving at root cause process

    Understanding the initial problem is important.  This is the core reason that we are aiming at solving the root cause of any situation after all.  A good deal of time proportionally is required at this step as this is the meta-problem that dominates all of your other efforts.  Really understand the mechanics of the problem and ask yourself the reasons why it is important that there is a solution.
    Reducing the problem to causal circumstances is perhaps the most technically advanced skill we will have to apply for problem solving.  This has to do with stepping outside of any emotional ties to the current situation and problem and asking yourself, "Why is this happening?".  The most difficult portion of this has to do with removing ego and personal attachment.  Many times the problems that we are solving involve us to some degree, and it is important that we do not let our involvement get in the way of accurately exposing the causality.

    There is no set amount of steps to further refine the causal circumstances.  This is all dependent on the depth of the problem.  Sometimes, especially in life, we have to move through dozens of layers of "why" in order to expose the root cause of an issue.  Sometimes this can be achieved in just a step or two.  It is important to walk into this process with an open mind and a willingness to dedicate mental resources to the solution.
    Once we believe that we have arrived at the root cause, it is time to get to the real work.  This doesn't necessarily mean that it is the most work-intensive step, however, just that the meat of the work that matters will be done here.  This is where we address the root issue of the problem and then re-evaluate to make sure that addressing the root cause has impacted the surface problem positively.  Sometimes we may find that we address the root cause and we have to then re-address a different root, or that the problem was multi-factoral, or perhaps that your solution to the root problem was just not sufficient.

Conclusion:

    This is a tool in leadership that I personally use often.  When properly used it is a great tool to analyze and implement corrections to issues.  The framework is one that is easily remembered and applicable through many areas of life outside of business.  In my case I can rely on a team to help implement solutions after I have identified root causes as to why certain things are happening.  At home, that team may just be my wife and children.  Sometimes I arrive at causes where I can apply solutions to, other times the problems are much larger than a band-aid, and a re-haul of processes must be in order to correct the surface issue.  I hope that you find this helpful, and if you have any questions feel free to contact me at my e-mail listed below.

Josh@JoshuaSturgell.com