The Numbers Reveal Huge Opportunities

If you're frustrated with trying to make important decisions and get results together, you're not alone. A few years ago, Stanford Business School asked an array of alumni to talk about what they found difficult in their jobs and where better training would be desirable. These leaders, with many years of experience in different sectors of the economy, most frequently cited the need for more effective ways to reach agreement and get results with diverse groups of people. The organizational dynamics of bringing people together on major projects, new mergers, or tough community issues frustrated them more than any of the technical challenges in their jobs. With increasing diversity in the workplace, more multinational businesses, and the advent of virtual teams, the challenges mount.

In an effort to explore typical decision-making practices and the frustrations people have with them, I conducted an informal survey of thirty-six organizations. It involved middle managers from a sample of manufacturing firms, service businesses, and government and educational organizations of various sizes. I focused on middle managers because they generally exhibit a healthy level of candor and are in a position to see up, down, and sideways in their organizations. Fewer than 10 percent of those organizations had discovered and consistently applied preactices like those in the ten-step process. (See Appendix A for the survey, which you can take for your own organization.)

While the gap between typical decision-making practices and the ten-step process is huge, the effort to bridge it is not. As you'll read, organizations have followed the process and resolved the toughest of issues in as little as an afternoon's time. So, you can see results quickly. Sustaining these results and building capacity within your organization to facilitate future sessions takes further commitment. The great thing is that early successes build interest and momentum to sustain these practices.

Bottom line, the ten-step process serves huge unmet needs, yields big improvements in performance, and offers easy ways to get started and to continue your success.