Proactive Decision-Making

Digital leaders and professionals spend a significant amount of time on decision-making, either strategic decisions, operational decisions or tactical decisions on the daily basis. Statistically, business decision effectiveness (especially large strategic decisions) is low, poor decision making is not just about the outcome, but about ineffective processes, lack of knowledge or resources, cognitive gaps, or procrastination, etc. So how to take a proactive approach for decision-making, and improve decision effectiveness and maturity?
Framing the right question is the first step in proactive decision-making: Framing the real issue needs to be solved is often the first step in making decisions. Sometimes decision-makers take passive thinking which is about  taking things as they come and not really asking questions or analyzing the information presented for its value. Critical thinking is a proactive thought process, which  is analyzing, looking beyond the surface, not just accepting things at face value but asking questions and being active in their thought processes. Critical thinking implies some systematic methodology and multidimensional thought processes, employing and applying the criteria deemed appropriate by the thinkers involved, to arrive at the tangible and reproducible truth, the commonly accepted objective, testable or measurable, time-bound reality. It helps to identify blind spots in decision making and gain an in-depth understanding of the real issue for decision making in a proactive way.
Leveraging information and technology in decision-making processes: Good decision-making often takes both intuition and analytics. At traditional companies, both strategic decisions and operations decisions are often based on static or even outdated information available and the “gut feeling” of decision makers. Now at the dawn of the digital era, the abundance of information flow and the more advanced digital technologies make it possible to gain real-time insight and business foresight if organizations are truly being digitized underneath, at the process level. It helps decision-makers at a different level of the organization to proactively leverage information and collect knowledge and collective insight for making effective decisions.  
Decision-making is also situation-driven: Decision making is situational, nothing is clear or concise. At the strategic level, therefore, the decision is not about good vs bad outcomes. It is important to identify the bottleneck in proactive decision-making scenario and choking point in decision-related communication or delegation. The companies that are working to bridge the decision gap will be the most successful business going forward. It’s about how to leverage both internal and external factors, information and intuition in making sound judgment, minimizing risks, maximizing opportunities and taking actions to move the business and the world forward. From doing the decision analysis to optimizing business processes, all need to be well aligned in order to make effective decisions timely, be optimistically cautious, the leader’s positive tones can amplify collective human capabilities in the organization and takes calculated risk in gaining the business competitive advantage.

Decision-making is difficult due to varying reasons such as uncertainty and ambiguity of business circumstances, failure of failures, unsure about priority, unconscious bias, lack of knowledge or profound thinking. The more important the decision, the more you need to have all the data, perform all the preparation, an increase of confidence of success but the search for perfection is the enemy of decision-making, take a proactive approach to continuous improvement for deciding wisely, timely and collectively.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu