Decide & Deliver: A book review by Bob Morris

Decide & Deliver: 5 Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization
Marcia W. Blenko, Michael C. Mankins, and Paul Rogers
Harvard Business Press (2010)

This book’s co-authors explain how and why making the right decisions will sustain superior performance. More specifically, they have the reader focus on these strategic objectives:

• Assess your decision effectiveness – and how your organization affects it
• Identify your critically important decisions
• Apply best practices to those critical decisions in need of improvement
• Ensure that the organization enables and reinforces great decision making and execution
• Embed all improvements in everyday practice

The co-authors devote a separate chapter to explaining how to achieve each of these strategic objectives. It is important to keep in mind that decision making is both a single transaction and an extended process; also, that the quality of decisions made by individuals is significantly influenced (for better or worse) by the culture within which they are made. Therefore, if individuals are held accountable for their decisions, their organization must share responsibility. For that reason, the co-authors not only examine how well individuals make and execute decisions; they also examine how organizations help or hinder that process.

Consider this checklist (on Pages 33-34) by which the co-authors identify ten “afflictions that compromise performance”:

Structural sclerosis (blockage and barriers, malfunctions, deterioration)
Decision ambiguity (confusion and indecision, anxiety, feeling intimidated)
Process analysis (delays, procrastination, “paralysis by analysis,” inability to prioritize)
Data dysfunction (information is incomplete, obsolete, inaccessible; cognitive overload)
Misaligned measures (right initiatives but wrong strategic objectives…vice versa; wrong incentives)
Blurred vision (the workplace equivalent of “the fog of war”; unclear objectives)
Consensus overdose (inability to achieve sufficient agreement & support; trying to please everyone; too many choices)
Talent deficiency (key people lack sufficient experience and/or competence; shallow “bench”; broken pipeline)
Behavior breakdown (gap between what leaders say and do, “knowing-doing gap,”
Performance anemia (lack of sufficient energy and/or engagement; “combat fatigue”; mental and/or emotional malnutrition)

Time Out: Curious, I established a scale of 1-10 (ten = None and One = Completely, per each of the ten “afflictions”) and rated the last five organizations at the time when they retained me to work with their C-level executives. I scored the least afflicted a total of 92, the most afflicted 67. How would you score your organization?

Leaders must decide how their organizations will make decisions. The core insight in this book is that organizations whose people consistently make outstanding judgments at all levels and in all areas will achieve superior performance. I urge all leaders to read and then re-read this book, then decide to co-create with their “best and brightest” people a comprehensive and cohesive system for decision making, one that provides whatever formal and informal training anyone may need to make the right decisions whenever and wherever they are needed.