Balanced Decisions

As you start to read this article, just quickly think about how many other bits of paper, articles, emails, spreadsheets you have seen or been thrust at you today? Given the position that you are in, probably hundreds if not thousands. As a leader and someone in a senior position, you are likely to have to digest literally thousands of bits of data and information every day, in order to disseminate and make decisions; some of which may be critical to your business, job or life, or even someone’s else’s.

So – given the importance of some of this information, how do you ensure that it is accurate, or high quality and/or even useful for your purpose? In short, how do you sort the ‘wheat from the chaff’ in terms of information?

Due to the way our brain handles information, we can glean very different results from the same information – quite scary really! Let me give you an example. Many years ago, I used to work with a delightful but ruthlessly straight-talking Australian. When something ‘displeased’ her, however, rather than use her usual plain speaking she would generally say something like ‘oh how wonderful’ or ‘that’s fantastic’ with not a trace of sarcasm! Therefore the odd situation that she found herself in would be confused to say the least - especially as we were also seconded abroad at the time! Now, although some of the individuals she conversed with were given the same information – the opinions and decisions that people were making were literally poles apart! Often, we really don’t know whether or not we have been given complete, sufficient or indeed accurate information! But just like at work, we can choose to make a decision without the complete facts in front of us; in fact that is one of your great assets, as a Leader in all probability. We all use our values, experience, intuition and assumptions about people, about situations, about the countries we are seconded to and anything else we may deem relevant, to cast an opinion. In your working situation, it would be highly unusual to say that you have never made a decision, without the full facts in front of you, wouldn’t it? However, we all do it – sometimes successfully and sometimes not so. Be that as it may, the important lesson is to be AWARE of that judgement call. Ensure that you are fully cogniscent of how you arrived at your decision.

There are several pointers that can help;

Ask for the right information in the first place
Sounds very obvious, but as CEO or similar you are often the one that creates the need for information. This may be to back up some initiative, find out about new products, suppliers or competition, information about internal processes, systems or people etc. and often something to support a change somewhere. However, more often than not, your request will be taken literally as you are the boss. So, ask yourself – “have I asked for some balanced and open information, or data that will support my hunch/argument?”. As we know in politics seen in the daily papers, any amount of information can be produced to support a point of view! However, there are times when we genuinely want to understand different view points or information, so ensure that the question that you ask is sufficiently open enough to be valuable to your decision making.
Trust – how much do you trust the information source?
This is not meant to sound dark and sinister! However, it is likely that whoever you have asked to produce some information will have a certain viewpoint. It is extremely hard for them not to be biased towards their point of view when producing information. For example, asking both the Marketing Director and the Finance Director, what percentage increase will be needed next year in the Marketing Budget, will provide you with significantly different ‘data’ I would suggest! For balanced information, maybe pick them both.
Presentation of data and information
When you are given information to look at or listen to – really do tune in your senses in doing so. What I mean by that is look beyond the words, the information, to understand it further, as this is also where some clues are hidden. There are some phrases that you can spot that identify the difference between facts and viewpoints. Phrases such as ‘I believe’, and ‘it is obvious’, or ‘I think’ are all indications that you are getting more than just straight data. To practise, listen or watch the news today and see how much information you are given is straight fact in comparison to points of view – you may be surprised! Body language will also indicate their emotional involvement in their presentation, so watch and listen for these clues also.

Your own thinking process
As we have discussed before, your subconscious brain does a great job at filtering information in a way that it thinks it is going to be useful for you. Before you know it consciously, masses on information is deleted, distorted or generalised before you make a conscious note of it. However, as this is your brain, it is possible to ‘tee-up’ your subconscious and check that your filters are doing a good job! For example, you may well be presented with the monthly revenue figures on a regular basis and you will skim to the data that is of most interest to you. Your brain will be noting this and spot a trend – a path of least resistance to make it easier for you next time. However, this may mean you miss something very obvious! So – practise looking somewhere different each month to keep you attuned and able to notice anomalies more easily.

In summary, just like any mechanical part, our brain’s filtering system can always do with a service! There may not be a need to change anything, but taking it apart, giving it a shake up and oiling it so that it is fully operable can only help it be more effective and efficient. It also may also last longer too, which can only be a good thing!

Until next week


Kate Tojeiro is an Executive Performance Coach at www.the-x-fusion.co.uk