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What We Do For You
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We help you improve your decision making.
Good decision making is the primary source of financial value creation. Every decision is an allocation of shareholder resources. So, to improve decision making is to directly increase shareholder value. We claim that decision making is the most important business activity any executive, manager or employee ever engages in, and accordingly, that decision quality is the key to enterprise success.
Timeliness, creativity, speed, and implementation effectiveness are keys to quality decision making, as are buy-in and commitment. An organizational culture change around decisions is often called for. Underlying these, quality processes and tools are the essential building blocks.
Clients call on us for four services:
(click on each of the above for more information)
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Executive Team Decision Facilitation BACK TO TOP
An Executive Team is facing a very major decision, often against an impossible deadline. In some cases, this is a “bet the company”-type decision. In other cases, it is simply a very important decision with the potential for large value creation or destruction. Sometimes, it is deciding the strategy for an important business unit. There is considerable risk and uncertainty. There are messy issues. There are awkward group dynamics. There are a number of component decisions that are hard to sort out. And there are strong differences of opinion on which way to go.
Our seasoned decision professionals guide you through this maze rapidly and skillfully. We provide facilitation, tools, and processes that assure you will reach a quality decision. We are not the decision makers, you are. We show you the judgments you will need to make and those that don’t matter; you focus on making them. We show you how to craft a decision you will be happy with. If there is a short deadline, this will be an intense process, but our intensity will overmatch yours.
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Decision Training BACK TO TOP
Our philosophy, which has been highly successful, is to transfer the technology of good decision making to our clients. We believe good decision making can be learned and our training programs have been developed over many years with this as the goal.
Clients sometimes ask us to develop custom training programs, and we are happy to do this. However, we have three standard off-the-shelf offerings.
¤ 1-day Executive Briefing
¤ 3-day Decision Workshop for Managers
¤ 1-day “At-your-desk” Decision Training for Employees
These are described in detail in the tab above, “Training Programs.” |
Decision Process Redesign BACK TO TOP
Many organizations recognize that they have systemic problems with decision making and turn to us to help fix their decision processes. Usually the solutions are a matter of introducing new decision methods and systematizing the movement of decision-relevant information between decision makers. In this case, knowledge of and a discipline in applying processes and tools is all that is needed.
Other times the solution involves changing the organization's decision culture. Most organizations welcome such a culture change because the changes are seen as introducing simple logic and common sense. As part of this introduction, several of our clients have chosen to create an internal entity dedicated to supporting quality decision making. This entity supports decision makers with decision facilitation, tools and analysis, and is responsible for measuring decision effectiveness. There are several successful examples of this approach among our clients.
In all cases, training is needed to make the process redesign "take." Usually these are built around the training programs described in detail in the tab above, "Training Programs."
Another critical element is transferring the capability to apply the right tools and processes to the right decisions. This is a twofold capability: knowledge of and skill with the different tools and processes required for small versus large decisions; and knowing which tools and processes, with what level of effort, are appropriate for which decisions (see the Decision Methods Sorter in the "Our Methods and Tools" tab). We teach you both aspects of this capability
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Decision Consulting BACK TO TOP
Rather than build a permanent internal decision support capability to replace us, some clients choose to have us facilitate their larger decisions on a one-by-one basis. This enables them to form temporary ad hoc teams around each important decision, and builds decision making skills across the organization over time while assuring each decision gets the attention of seasoned decision practitioners.
Each of our professionals has seen a large number of decisions go by, and brings years of experience spread across many companies, many industries and many countries. Sometimes clients see direct decision consulting as the best option for quickly improving their organization's decision making in the face of a few urgent decisions.
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