By Mary Arnold
After day two of CUES' DLI: Governance institute in Toronto, I'm eager to discuss how to make quality decisions at the board level. For background, I'd like to ask all of you how you would make a board decision.
Oh … wait, I just broke the first rule: "Do not take a poll at the beginning of the meeting."
According to our presenter, John E. Oesch, there are two main reasons not to begin a discussion by asking a group to share their positions: 1) If you publicly commit to a position at the outset, it's harder to change your mind later without looking like a "flip-flopper." 2) Hearing fellow directors' positions may limit discussions and lead to group think. Some directors, for example, may not share their opinions after hearing those of more outspoken board members, and discussions may focus on information that supports the most popular ideas rather than searching out new ones or exploring contradictory data, explained Oesch, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
So instead of polling, start by discussing the criteria on which you'll base your decision. There's always some bias, but using this methodology will help reduce it, he suggested.
"Criteria" might mean the skills the board is looking for in a new CEO or, generally, what a "good outcome" for the decision will look like. Be sure to get agreement on, write down and weight the criteria.
While this might seem like a "waste of time," Oesch recommended thinking about it as an investment. "If you have a good healthy fight about criteria," he said, "the rest becomes easy." And when quality decisions are made the first time, you're less likely to spend time repeating the process to correct a mistake.
"We cannot control the outcome of our decisions," he said, "but we can control the process."
Try this at your next meeting:
- Identify criteria on which you'll make your decision.
- Gather information about the problem.
- Indentify alternatives (speak up!).
- Evaluate the alternatives against weighted criteria.
- Re-visit the criteria if you get new information.
- Take your time.
Mary Arnold is VP/publications for CUES.
Read another post about DLI: Governance.
