5 Steps To Achieving Decision Flow At Your Company

Poor decision-making processes have a massive negative impact on employee engagement – it’s hard to be fulfilled by work if you are unempowered, left out of the loop and repeatedly derailed by bad decisions. On the other hand, effective decision-making processes enhance job satisfaction, boost employee morale and create a more engaged and motivated workforce.

Strong decision-making processes increase efficiency and productivity, allowing employees to focus on their core responsibilities and contribute more effectively to organizational goals. Effective decision-making fosters a culture of innovation and creativity, empowering individuals to think outside the box and make better, faster decisions.

As a result, when it comes to company performance, decision-making matters a lot: decision effectiveness is 95 percent correlated with revenue growth, return on capital and shareholder return. 

Companies aiming to modernize their decision-making processes should make decision flow their goal.

Decision Flow Is The North Star

Decision flow is an idealized goal for creating decision-making processes that combine business information, team collaboration and past experience, leading to optimal decisions with minimal friction. In decision flow, individuals and teams effortlessly navigate complex situations, rapidly synthesizing data and diverse perspectives to arrive at well-informed, balanced conclusions.

Achieving decision flow hinges on standardizing decision-making processes, streamlining collaboration and leveraging advanced AI and automation technologies. A decision flow state enables organizations to unlock their full potential, driving innovation and maintaining a competitive edge in an ever-evolving business landscape.

The Five Steps To Decision Flow

There are five practical steps to achieving decision flow at your company.

1. Decision-back simplification

The path to decision flow starts by using a decision-back approach to structure the few critical decisions that drive core business processes. As an example, in an innovation process, the three key decisions you might focus on are:

• Which future trends represent the biggest business opportunity?
• Which concepts have the best chance of succeeding?
• What are our optimal go-to-market paths?

Once the critical decisions are identified, they can be standardized by establishing a series of decision trees with well-defined protocols and decision-making criteria and connecting them into a single decision flow. These decision flows become the new “process diagram.”

2. Decision-centric collaboration & communication

To achieve decision flow, organizations must rethink communication and collaboration with decision-making as the core organizing principle. Standardized decision processes are designed to harness teams' collective intelligence, empowering employees to exchange ideas, knowledge, and expertise. Collaboration is facilitated through structured decision-centric asynchronous communication, enabling teams to access the wealth of human experience regardless of physical presence or availability. This approach fosters an inclusive, agile, and efficient decision-making style suited to the demands of the modern work environment.

3. Digital infrastructure & integration

Implementing robust, scalable digital solutions that support decision-making is crucial in the modern business landscape. Technology analyst firm Gartner has coined the term decision intelligence platform to describe this new wave of decision-centric technology solutions. These decision intelligence tools offer more efficient decision workflows and seamless integration with other systems and enterprise data sources, enabling faster and more effective decision-making. 

4. Measurement, learning & optimization

While even simple decision logs can make a difference, a comprehensive decision intelligence platform is instrumental in identifying and tracking key performance indicators for optimizing decision-making processes and outcomes. Decision intelligence platforms facilitate continuous improvement by providing a centralized space for gathering and analyzing stakeholder feedback and tracking decision outcomes. With the help of these platforms, organizations can create a virtuous cycle of learning and optimization, leading to more informed and effective decision-making and building essential institutional knowledge.

5. Automation & AI

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can significantly enhance decision-making processes. Advanced decision intelligence platforms incorporate AI tools like predictive analytics and natural language processing to improve decision-making frameworks, reduce manual analytical tasks and optimize decision-making over time.

Achieving Decision Flow

Achieving decision flow drives positive outcomes in organizations via streamlined decision-making processes, collaboration and digitization. The decision flow state also promotes open communication, encouraging employees to explore novel solutions and enhancing innovation and creativity. Moreover, modernized decision-making processes increase job satisfaction, boosting employee morale and creating a more engaged workforce. 

By modernizing decision-making processes, organizations can enhance efficiency and productivity, foster a culture of innovation and creativity, and ultimately drive organizational success.

Download our free whitepaper to learn more about achieving decision flow.