Every few years , Stanford University professor Chip Heath and his brother, Dan, a senior fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), distill decades of academic research into a tool kit for practitioners. The bicoastal brothers offered advice on effective communications in Made to Stick, on change management in Switch, and now, in their new book, Decisive, on making good decisions. It’s a topic that McKinsey’s Olivier Sibony has been exploring for years in his work with senior leaders of global companies and in a number of influential publications. Chip and Olivier recently sat down to compare notes on what matters most for senior leaders who are trying to boost their decision-making effectiveness.
Chip Heath: The process changes don’t have to be very big. Ohio State University professor Paul Nutt spent a career studying strategic decisions in businesses and nonprofits and government organizations. The number of alternatives that leadership teams consider in 70 percent of all important strategic decisions is exactly one. Yet there’s evidence that if you get a second alternative, your decisions improve dramatically. One study at a medium-size technology firm investigated a group of leaders who had made a set of decisions ten years prior. They were asked to assess how many of those decisions turned out really well, and the percentage of “hits” was six times higher when the team considered two alternatives rather than just one.
Within this approach, we don't look to simply add another (3rd) option to the list for consideration, but instead we refer to the power of working with others to come up with options that are 'not my way, not your way but a 3rd and better way'. The mindset shift required here is to truly value the diversity of perspective others bring so that we actively seek it out. Then the communication skills involved allows us to tease out the multiple perspectives present, without being limited by previous experiences (or 'autobiography'). Finally there is the process of considering these inputs in a process which stimulates thinking around 'prototype' and 'countertype' options, and all of this takes place in an atmosphere of abundant (rather than scarcity) thinking, so that whatever the final decision engagement levels in its adoption are likely to be high. As for the difference in outcomes that can be achieved, our experience is that this approach can help teams and organisations move beyond incremental gains and achieve truly transformational impact.
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