Muhammad Adeel Khan

MBLE-13-39
Summary

Making good decisions and making them quickly is a differentiator of high-performing

companies. Article name ' Who has the D? How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational
Performance by Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko published by the Harvard Business
Review. Experience has repeatedly shown us that corporations that have strategy execution
problems tend to have mirky decision-making processes. High performing companies make good
decisions and make them happen quickly.
Rogers and Blenko provide the following Decision Diagnostic which is worth taking because it
will provide you with a snap shot of how effective the decision-making process is in your
organization:

Consider the last 3 meaningful decisions you've been involved in and ask yourself the following
questions:
1. Were the decisions right?
2. Were they made with appropriate speed?
3. Were they executed well?
4. Were the right people involved, in the right way?
5. Was it clear for each decision:
- Who would recommend a solution?
- Who would provide input?
- Who had the final say?
- Who would be responsible for follow-through?
6. Were the decision roles, process, and time frame respected?
7. Were the decisions based on appropriate facts?

8. To the extent that there were divergent facts or opinions, was it clear who had the D?
9. Were the decision makers at the appropriate level in the company?
10. Does the organization's measures and incentives encourage the people involved to make
the right decisions?
We are all called upon to make decisions everyday in our respective roles. Our successes,
failures, opportunities won or lost are a function of the decisions that we made or that we failed
to make. The next time you are given the opportunity to work on a crucial project or are in a
position to influence the direction that the company takes in a particular area, glance over at the
Diagnostic and ask you the 10 questions. They may well save you alot of time and money in the
long run.
If I am a leader than one of the key lessons I've learned as a leader is to clarify a key question
before the end of a meeting:
Who has the D?
The "D" in this case refers to the Decision Maker in a RAPID framework.
RAPID is defined as follows:

Recommend

Approve

Perform

Input

Decide

In every process or decision, you need to know what role you and other members of your team
play means are you there to recommend a solution? Are you there to propose alternatives?
Perform actions? These are roles that need to make decision. According to my perception the
most important of these is the D. What is the decision you need to make? And who can make the
decision?

If no one, or alternatively, everyone, is a decision maker, you have a problem.

For an example of the effects of lack of clarify in decision-making, look to Washington DC.
While the US government demonstrates the brilliance of the Founding Fathers in balancing
power, it's a disaster as a model for efficiency and running a business.
Make sure that by the end of every meeting you've clarified who is the D. This will enable you
and your teams to move forward. Here are some examples of where you can speed decisionmaking by clarifying the D:

In local markets, who has makes the decision to change prices or create promotions?
Within what guardrails?

In prioritizing features, who has the decision-rights to cut a feature in order to hit a key
milestone?

In hiring a new employee, who makes the decision to hire? Who makes the decision to
fire? Do you have a "bar raiser" in your process who has the ability to block a hire?

There are hundreds of small and large decisions made by a business every day.
As your team grows, many decisions will be good ones, but many will be wrong. But if you don't
know who made them, or who is empowered, decisions won't happen.