Years ago I attended a class on Precision Questioning and Precision Answering, it was a tough class but I learned a lot. One of the most important things I learned, which I had experienced many times in the business world, is that very few people use a process in order to make important decisions, they just go with general ideas and a gut feel. Again, from years of experience, I have watched many senior executives make huge decisions, multi-million-dollar decisions, not using any kind of a formal process for organizing their thinking. Here is a list of 20 questions I use when helping organizations to make important business decisions.
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What is the real timeframe for this decision?
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Who needs to be involved in making this decision?
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Who does not need to be involved in making this decision?
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Can this decision be overridden by a person higher in the organization?
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If so, why are they not making this decision?
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Do we have the data necessary to support making a good decision?
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How do we know that the data is reliable and up-to-date?
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Do we have the financial numbers necessary to make this decision?
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If so, how do we know that they are accurate and up-to-date?
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Who else in the organization will be impacted by this decision?
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Do they need to be involved in making this decision?
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How, specifically, will we implement this decision?
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What metrics will we use to track success or failure?
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Who, specifically, will be responsible for the implementation of this decision?
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What is the real timeline for the overall implementation of this decision?
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What do we expect, specifically, as a successful outcome from this decision?
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Is there anything we would have to stop doing or change in order to implement this decision?
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Will this decision have a major impact on our brand in the marketplace?
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Well this decision have a major impact on our customers?
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What are the ramifications if this decision is wrong or poorly implemented?
If you have to make a major decision in your organization I strongly encourage you to use this list of questions in order to ensure that you are making a good decision. I can’t guarantee that the decision will work out perfectly, but I can almost surely guarantee that if you don’t go over this list and at least entertain several of the key questions, there will be a good chance that the decision will fail.
Are there any questions that I missed?
All excellent, thorough questions. I used to think managers who didn’t make decisions like this just needed to be trained how, but the more I trained my clients, I noticed something interesting. They weren’t making gut decisions because they didn’t know how to make thoughtful decisions, but because many of the decisions they needed to make had quick timeframes. What happens when, at question 1, the “real timeframe” is an hour? Or even a day? Answering ALL of these questions, especially in a large organization, can take a long time (and not all may be answerable). Or what if you’re a new manager and don’t know where to find this information? Or an entrepreneur without clear organizational structure yet? Now I teach clients how to make the best decision with the information they have and how to organize themselves and their companies to identify and correct wrong decisions when they are made.