Making decisions a game

We had a saying at the company I worked at prior to ERC — “time kills all deals.”

Perhaps a blunt way of expressing how slow decision-making can really hurt a business. Larger organizations seem to have a reputation of making decisions at a snail’s pace, but experience dictates that organizations of any size can be stricken with this “disease.”

Thanks to technology, timely information is more accessible than it has ever been in history. People are really wired these days (not just from coffee) and communicate and transmit information at what seems lighting speeds.

When you take a step back, considering all of our technological progress ,” you would think that with the tools and information available, most corporate decisionmaking would be quick, efficient and remarkably accurate. Yet, there are still many organizations that have a difficult time even deciding what food should be in the company vending machines.

An interesting and useful exercise is to flowchart how decisions are made within an organization. The results might be surprising to you and your team.

Take your recruiting process for example. How long does it take a qualified candidate to receive an offer from your organization from the beginning of the recruiting process to the end; a few weeks or a few months?

How many good candidates have you lost because of a slow recruiting, decision and approval process? Considering that top talent is hard to find these days, organizations can ill afford a recruitment and selection program that lasts more than a week or so — a slow bureaucratic process sends a message to candidates that your organization might be filled with red tape.

So if molasses is faster than decisions about candidates, don’t be surprised if you have a tough time hiring good people.

When I was growing up, the kids in my neighborhood had an effective decisionmaking tool. We played the game Rock-Paper-Scissors. Whenever there was a dispute on whether to play hide-n-go-seek or play baseball for example, we would revert to Rock-Paper-Scissors. Like a scene from the standoff at the OK Corral, two kids would oppose each other, right hand behind their back and on the count of three bring their hand around formed as either a rock(clenched fist), scissors (index and middle finger spread apart forming scissors) or paper (fingers extended and together with palm side down facing the ground). Of course, rocks broke scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper covered rocks.

This process was repeated until one of the kids won two out of three rounds. It was a pretty simple decision-making process for our group, but it worked.

What was most interesting is that the outcome of the Rock-Paper-Scissors exercise was final. No disputes. There was a code among us that the Rock-Paper-Scissors approach was the fairest way to make a decision and one that we would all live by. It certainly made our summers more fun — instead of sitting around arguing about what we would do, we made decisions and got on with being kids. What a concept!

Wouldn’t it be interesting to spend a business day making decisions between two viable alternatives using the Rock-Paper-Scissors approach?

Next time someone in your organization suggests a committee or task force to make an easy decision, suggest an alternate approach. Challenge them to the time-tested Rock-Paper-Scissors solution. What have you got to lose except wasted time?