JEDDAH – Getting to the very core of arriving at the right decision is not that easy, Jenny Davis Peccoud, Senior Director, Global Organization Practice, Bain & Company, told the Saudi Gazette in the continuation of the interview. She said at Bain, they are using a time-tested tool to clarify who is accountable for what during the decision making process. The mechanism is called RAPID, which is an acronym for Input, Recommend, Agree, Decide and Perform, which are essentially the primary roles in any decision. – Input. People with input responsibility provide the data that is the basis of any good decision. They also offer their own judgments about the proposals. They have the right to provide input to a recommendation but not to veto it. – Recommend. The person in this role leads the process and is responsible for obtaining and evaluating the relevant facts and proposing alternative courses of action. – Agree. People who must agree to a recommendation are those who must sign off on it before it can move forward—executives with legal or regulatory compliance responsibilities, for instance. – Decide. Eventually, one person will decide. Giving the D (decision) to one individual ensures single-point accountability. – Perform. The perform role goes to the individual or group that will execute the decision and that is responsible for doing so promptly and effectively. Moreover, she said meetings are certainly very important tool for the organization to be able to reach a good decision. Unfortunately, the majority of meetings are not being managed efficiently, she noted. Bain research has shown that about two-thirds of meetings run out of time before important decisions are made. Moreover, 85 percent of executives surveyed by Bain said they were dissatisfied with the effectiveness of their companies' meetings. To resolve this, it is important to always design and run meetings with decisions in mind. A simple technique to achieve this is to distribute meeting materials in advance and label the items that require a decision. A great tool is to announce the meeting's purpose at the outset, e.g. with a single statement: “The purpose of this meeting is to inform you about X, to discuss Y and to decide on Z,” where Z is a specific, well-defined decision. Also, be sure that the meeting is attended by people who have been assigned to key RAPID decision roles. Knowing priorities is also crucial, Peccoud noted. When people understand a company's priorities, they can make good decisions about what to do. “While it can be hard to align a leadership team that is spread out over regions, functions and business units, it is even harder — yet even more critical to effective decisions—to ensure alignment throughout the organization, so that people at all levels can make and execute decisions in line with the company's top priorities. One key to this is good communication: spreading the word about goals and priorities through clear, simple messages, usually repeated many times through many different methods.” She pointed out that many companies align their organizational structure with their strategy. “We believe it is more important to ask the question: Does our structure support the decisions most critical to creating value? Based on our experience, we have learned that structure is rarely the main cause of poor decision-making and execution. However, it is sometimes necessary to reorganize the structure, and this should be done with the aim of aligning the structure with the business' most important decisions. The organization must be structured in a way that will make the company come up with better decisions that would ultimately contribute to the company's success.” Peccoud agreed that it is common among organizations to ask themselves whether they are winning the war for talent. “In reality, it is a subjective question that takes a long time and would often need external input to answer. The more important question to ask is: Are we putting our best people in the jobs where they can have the biggest impact on decisions?” From this perspective, any organization can definitely make positive changes in harnessing the true potential of their talent. In one technology company that we have worked with, it was found that fewer than 30 percent of its mission-critical positions were filled by top performers. It was also discovered that only 40 per cent of its top performers were in key positions. Reassigning many of these individuals therefore created a significant impact on the company's performance and also helped to improve its decision -making effectiveness. – SG
