Quality decisions improve organizational health, full stop. Decisions have the power to make or break a business’s bottom line, either gradually or in one fell swoop. How your company makes decisions also affects invested employees feel in their roles, making it an important part of overall culture.
Many organizations know they’re falling short of optimizing decision-making but aren’t sure exactly how to change that. Start by giving employees everything they need—including trust and tools—to make good decisions.
What Hinders Decision-Making at Work?
Part of empowering employees to make good decisions is removing the hurdles standing in their way. What hurdles? Well, company culture and policies may “make decision-making a multi-layer process that requires forms, documentation and numerous signatures.” This reduces the number of decisions employees are able to make and makes them cumbersome even when they do go through.
Businesses that adhere to an overly hierarchical chain of command may also find employees are hesitant to make decisions, believing them to be the jurisdiction of someone higher up. This points to an underlying culture issue—one companies must evaluate and work on if they want to change how employees approach decision-making as a practice. When employees feel micromanaged, they tend to opt out of making decisions or questioning authority, meaning companies lose vital and diverse perspective at every level.
Connect Employees to Analytics Tools
What do good decisions look like? Well, they have positive business outcomes—like improving internal operations, reducing inefficiencies, raising revenue, delivering results for clients, etc. And to make these good decisions, employees need access to the latest information available. This is where data analytics and business intelligence tools enter the picture to connect employees with data insights they can then factor into their decisions. Next-gen analytics from ThoughtSpot, for instance, give non-technical employees access to data insights two different ways: through search- and through artificial intelligence-driven analytics.
Search-driven analytics allow employees to enter specific queries in straightforward language, like a merchandiser at a retail organization looking up sales growth by product category over the last year. This ability to ask ad hoc questions and receive answers in seconds empowers employees to make informed decisions much faster than static reports do, plus users can continue to ask questions beyond the initial query to get the full picture.
What about insights that would be helpful in decision-making that employees haven’t even had a chance to ask, though? AI-driven analytics uncovers potentially useful insights using algorithms; all employees have to do is click.
Employees can make confident, data-driven decisions when they’re empowered with the full range of information they need. This is precisely why so many enterprises are ramping up their data analytics strategy to include self-service tools; data has immense value when it finds its way into the hands of the people making decisions on a daily basis in a format they can understand.
Set Expectations, Build Trust
People feel comfortable making decisions at work only when they know they have the authority to do so. When employees feel decisions are outside their domain or “above their pay grade,” they’ll hesitate—or pass off the decision to someone else. It’s like calling the ball in volleyball: If nobody calls it and steps up to hit the ball, it’ll just fall to the floor between teammates as they stare at each other, each thinking the other person would handle it.
Creating an organizational chart is a good way to set clear expectations. One CEO recommends this strategy because it “provides an at-a-glance answer when employees are confused about whether they should make a decision or not.” Based on the decision at hand, employees can choose to handle it themselves or escalate it to a superior when needed. This helps ensure the person most qualified to make the decision actually does it, improving organizational outcomes.
Using these tactics to empower employees to make quality decisions will help your organization avoid missed opportunities for improvement.