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Research Triangle Business Advisors August 2015 Newsletter |
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The job of a manager is to make decisions. At any time in the day, most executives are focused on some aspect of decision making: sharing information, reviewing documents, solution innovation, evaluating options, implementing directives, and following up. But while managers at all levels must dedicate themselves to decision making, the way successful managers approach the decision-making process changes as they move up to higher levels of management. At the lower levels, the job is to get product sales or, for services firms, to solve client issues on site. At the higher levels, the job is making decisions about which products or services to offer and how to develop and deliver them. To climb the management ladder and be effective in new roles, managers need to learn new skills and approaches.
Bob De Contreras 919-280-1307 Management Decision-Making Style Changes OUTLINE Defining Decision Styles Decisions – Public vs. Private How Manager Styles Progress Change Between Manager and Director Level Change at Second Level of Management Change at Mid-Executive and Director Levels and Beyond Management Development Map Management Style Migration Aids The Bottom Line Defining Decision Styles Before we look at the success models, it’s helpful to define decision styles. Decision styles differ in two basic ways: How information is used and how options are created. When it comes to information use, some managers want to mull over every piece of information before they make any decision. These data consumers can’t rest until they are certain they’ve found all the options and the very best solution. The result is a well-informed decision, but it may come at a cost in time and effectiveness. These managers are “multi-focused.” Other managers just want the key facts. They are quick to leap to hypotheses and then test them as they go. These managers are ready to act as soon as they have enough information to satisfy their “gut” (some call this the “reasonable man test”). These managers are “single-focused.” As for creating options, “single-focused” decision makers strongly believe in taking one course of action, while their “multi-focused” counterparts generate lists of possible options and may pursue multiple courses. “Single-focused” managers put their energy into making things come out as they believe they should, “multi-focus” managers into adapting to circumstances. Decisions – Public vs. Private Another dimension is that managers tend to make decisions differently in public, where they know they are being observed, than they do in private, where there is no need to explain or justify their process. You can consider the public mode as “leadership style” and the private mode as “thinking style.” In other words managers don’t tend to lead the way they think. This distinction applies to all aspects of decision making, whether the manager is gathering information, evaluating, presenting options, or making a final choice. How Manager Styles Progress Decision-making styles do a complete flip over the course of a management career. That is, the decision style of a successful CEO is the opposite of a successful first-line manager. In the leadership style (or public) mode, steady progression is evident as managers move up in the ranks adopting more openness, diversity of opinion, and participative decision making, matched by a step-by-step drop in the more directive, command-oriented styles. In the thinking style (or private) mode, managers prefer to gather a lot of information and think things through—and, at the highest executive levels, an advancement in the styles favoring one course of action. As managers move up the ladder, they move further away from where the action takes place, so it is easy to lose touch with what’s really going on in the company. It’s essential for higher level managers to use a leadership style that keeps the information pipeline open and the data flowing freely, so they have access to the best information and analysis. That’s why flexible and integrative styles dominate at the senior executive level. The open pipeline in turn feeds the evolving thinking style, where the ever more analytic, information-hungry senior executive is focused on finding the single right answer. In public, senior executives present a willingness to consider options so as to encourage people to offer information. In private, they use that information to zero in on a single option or, at a minimum, to narrow the options down to a workable strategy. These patterns in both public and private decision styles become even more pronounced when you isolate the most successful managers, who become even more open and interactive in their leadership styles and even more analytic in their thinking styles as they progress in their careers. Change Between Manager and Director Level So when does the major shift in styles occur? Research data show that in both the public and the private modes, decision styles tend to cluster early in the management hierarchy. Somewhere between the manager and director levels, executives find that approaches that used to work are no longer effective. At this point, managers’ styles fall into a “convergence zone,” where no one style stands out as being used more or less than the others. From then on, decision styles fan out again, though in the opposite direction, with different styles becoming the norm. Change at Second Level of Management The second level of management is a key transition point in an up-and-coming executive’s career. At lower levels, the priority is to keep everyone focused on immediate tasks and getting the work done – people management. At higher levels, that doesn’t work anymore. Decision styles become more about listening than telling, more about understanding than directing. Managers must drop the attachment to the hard-edged decisive and hierarchic modes of leadership in favor of the more inclusive flexible and integrative styles. This is a difficult transition, a point where many otherwise talented managers fail, because it’s natural to keep doing things the way that worked well in the past. Change at Mid-Executive and Director Levels and Beyond A secondary transition point takes place in the thinking styles of managers around the mid-executive and director levels. This is where the integrative style reaches its peak, a time when managers must be creative and innovate ideas to be passed to higher management for consideration. Beyond the director level, the pressure to think in an exploratory and creative way drops off, and more focused thinking again becomes important for success. Increasingly, managers must narrow down their choices and commit people and resources to singular plans. They are ultimately responsible for their decisions and they must be able to call the shots, often on the spot. Management Style Migration Aids So far we have discussed management style in a clinical way. Now we need to look at the practical side of management decision-making. The “multi-focused,” data consuming managers eventually need to transition to “single-focused” as they climb the management ladder. The question is how do they learn to accept less information before making the decision? The answer is simple, yet hard to believe. The experiences we have encountered and the skills we have built as we climb the management ladder have actually instilled in us the subconscious ability to “see” the right answer when our brain is screaming for more information to make the decision. Managers who must make a decision on the spot can do it by simply going with their “gut,” which is just another way of saying, go with their subconscious knowledge of what to do. A way to test this is to think of six different solutions to a problem. Even if you can only think of one, your subconscious can come up with five more. You just have to force yourself to come up with the six solutions. Then in the conscious, thinking world, you can now choose from the last three you thought of and one of them will be the best answer. Try it and you will be amazed. The transition from “multi-focused” to “single-focused” also requires the manager to change to accepting that one best solution. One of the things that slow this transition is that the manager has become accustom to multiple alternatives and the safety of knowing there is a back-up solution. What these managers fail to do is focus on their past successes in decisions rather than the miss-steps. The transition can easily start with the proverbial first step and a focus on past successes. As was mentioned a couple of times above, manager maturity in climbing the ladder can’t happen until managers can trust their “gut.” This can’t be learned except by practice. And, in this situation practice means going with the gut decision and accepting that as you learn you will get some right and some wrong. The transition can’t happen until the manager is willing to accept some level of “error in judgement.” Remember that adults only learn from their mistakes, so making mistakes is a good thing. Likewise, advancing managers must be willing to accept and support “learning mistakes” in their direct reporting staff. The Bottom Line Self-inspect your style and past styles and decide if your decision making style has changed as you climbed the management ladder. If not you probably have some work to do. If yes, evaluate if the changes have been in alignment with the highlights in this article. The primary lesson for managers is that failing to evolve in how you make decisions can be fatal to your career. If managers recognize this and correct the course, they can find the path to successful management career advancement.
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