After watching the video, I can’t help but think of a common
Navy nuke term – MOTO. MOTO stands for
Master of the Obvious, which is somewhat how I think about this video. I was not shocked to hear that there is a
positive correlation between decision effectiveness and organizational effectiveness. Unless I am misinterpreting what
effectiveness means, I took that statement to say good decisions makes good
companies. I would not have thought that
a statement like that needed research, but the research was conducted just to
make sure. Something that was not
surprising but at least not a “no kidding” moment was the statement that
employee engagement leads to better decision effectiveness. When employees are engaged by upper
management, their satisfaction with their job goes up, which means a more effective
employee. This not only leads to more
production but more importantly it leads to more/better information getting up
to the right people. When making
decisions, having the right information is key to ensuring you make the right
decision – and getting this information can only occur if the support structure
is operating properly.
Good information is a necessity when making decisions,
however it can also be an impediment to decision making. Information overload is something that people
must constantly guard against in both the civilian and military world. This is especially the case now that the
internet –and all of the information that is available on it - is accessible
from literally anywhere. One can quickly
be overloaded with too much information very quickly, and this will certainly
bog down the decision making process.
Complexity can also lead to challenges in decision making. If you are middle management, you might feel
like you are not the right guy to make a certain decision due to the
implications of the question at hand.
Luckily, the military does not have a very complex chain of command and
everyone knows exactly who should make the majority of the decisions. This is not always the case in the public
sector, especially in the huge multinational corporation. Going back to the statement on employee
engagement, if your employees are not supporting their leaders, decision making
can quickly become fouled due to lack of information or bad information. Finally, Clausewitz’s Fog of War is a
hindrance to all decision making, whether it be in battle or in business. No matter how much information you try to
collect, there will always be unknowns in the equation. You can try to mitigate the unknown’s effect
in your problem, but in the end, the unknown is there. This creates a “fog” on the periphery of your
knowledge that shields what the correct solution is.
The four elements addressed in the video with respect to
decision making make sense. Quality,
speed, yield, and effort (as described in the video) all play a part in
ensuring that you are make the best decision (quality) in the correct amount of
time(speed) with the correct amount of preparation(effort) and the proper
amount of execution (yield).
The major point I took away from this video is the emphasis
on how your employees play a huge role in the decision processes. They might not be the ones making the
decisions, however they are the ones that have to live with them. If you can get them more involved, you will
get a better product from them which means you can make a better decision for
them. Additionally, I did like the fact
that she discussed breaking down the command chain into a series of who makes
what decision. Thinking about my CoC on
a ship, that is pretty much how the command chain is already structured,
however I do intend to keep that in mind when I hit the business world several
years down the road.
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