A frequently asked question on management training programmes is “Who makes the decisions in your business?” The reason for this is you can quickly learn a lot about the structure and culture of an organisation by asking this one question.
If the organisation has a relatively tall structure (several layers of management with a small number of people reporting to each manager), unless you are asking the question of senior managers, the answer is likely to be “Not me”, or more vaguely “I don’t know” or perhaps “I don’t know but I wish they would speak to me first”.
Ask the same question in an established flat structured organisation and the answer is more likely to be “Well, that depends on the decision in question”. With further prompting you may get an explanation something like the following.
“Big decisions are usually made at the top; after all, they are the people with the information to make those decisions. I am free to make decisions directly relating to my job and the tasks that I do and the responsibilities that I have, if I am uncertain or don’t feel that I can make the decision, I refer it to my boss, who will either make the decision or take it one step higher, until the decision is made.” Sounds like utopia!
Of course the reality is probably somewhere between the two.
Often one of the key reasons that managers resist allowing others to make decisions is because they don’t feel confident in the outcome (or perhaps the other person’s ability to make the decision).
Whilst some people would I am sure argue that they rely on “gut feel” for many of their decisions, there are reliable processes and skills that can be learned through management development that, whilst not guaranteeing success, will increase your success rate to a highly acceptable level.
Learning and using a robust process to make decisions, and encouraging others to do so too, will dramatically improve your chances of success and perhaps give you confidence to let others contribute to the decision making process.
By John Freshney | Righttrack’s Operations Manager