Say Goodbye to "Bunch Ball" Decision-Making

Does decision-making in your organization sometimes look like “bunch ball”—you know, when young soccer players swarm the ball, don’t pass, and don’t play positions? Debbie and I have worked with organizations large and small where too many people want to be involved in every decision.

The result, as you may have experienced, can be frustrating, painful decision-making. If you recognize any of these symptoms in your organization, you may be suffering from “bunch ball” decision-making:

  • Decision delay: Getting input and buy-in from everyone takes forever, possibly without a clear decision owner.
  • Decision swirl: Decisions are made but then revisited, sometimes more than once.
  • Decision tunnel vision: Decisions are made in silos, without understanding the upstream and downstream impacts.

So what’s the winning game plan? How do you help your organization outgrow “bunch ball” decision-making and become World Cup decision-makers? As with successful soccer teams, everyone has to know their position and play it well. It’s all about roles and responsibilities!

Meet the Players

Of the several decision-making frameworks we’ve seen in action, we use a Driver, Approver, Consultants, and Informed (DACI) model for its simplicity and flexibility in laying out each role’s responsibilities. (Note: This is a scalable process. You can identify roles quickly, often in your head, with no burdensome overhead.)

  • The Driver guides the decision-making process. 
  • The Approver makes the final call and is accountable for the outcome.
  • The Consultants provide data and advice to ensure a sound decision.
  • The Informed are told about the decision but do not have a say.

For DACI to work, everyone must play their position. “Stay in your lane!” was what one of our clients exhorted. Beyond that general principle, here are some tips for each role in a moderate-to-complex decision.

If you’re the Driver, you make sure the decision moves forward. Engage the Approver. Cast a wide net to ensure all Consultants are identified and then ruthlessly edit down the list to only key Consultants. Get clear on how decision choices will be identified and evaluated. In complex decisions, you may also be the one to collect input from the Consultants and evaluate them for the Approver. Your efforts are critical to getting a timely, effective decision made.

If you’re the Approver, be available to the Driver to review DACI roles, discuss the context and desired outcomes of the decision, help identify evaluation criteria to be used, review the Consultants’ input, and whatever else is important for reaching a sound decision. You’re accountable for the decision and its outcome, so help the Driver help you.

If you’re a Consultant, remember that you don’t have veto power. You provide your expertise, opinion, data, or other input and trust the Approver to consider your contribution in combination with the rest of the input collected.

Informed? You’re only a spectator even if you care deeply about the outcome. When you hear the decision, you’ll want to model acceptance and responsiveness.

Sizing Your DACI

Of course, you’ll want to adapt DACI to your specific needs. Like in a simple backyard scrimmage, sometimes one person plays multiple roles. In a limited-scope decision such as a department website redesign, the Driver and Approver could be the same person. For a big, complex decision like where to relocate an office or in which market to first launch a product, there might be a lot of information to collect, many people involved, and the need for a dedicated Driver to manage the process and provide a recommendation to the Approver.

SCORE: Your Team: 1 Painful Decision-Making: 0

When the players identified in the DACI framework work effectively together, your decisions are made without delay, are revisited only with good reason, and balance all stakeholder needs. DACI for the win!

We’ve got a wealth of resources, activities, and workshops designed to help improve your organization’s decision-making. Reach out at info@cwtrainingandconsulting.com, and we’ll be happy to design a solution for you.

Decision Making - 05/02/2023

Demystifying Project Success

Have you found yourself managing projects when your primary role is NOT a project manager? As a friend and co-worker once said, "Life IS a Project." Regardless of your role at work or at home, there are always projects to be accomplished. At work it could be a product launch, product promotion or product development. Maybe you are in operations and are more focused on the back office success of the company. At home, you could be planning a vacation or a group outing of some sort. Maybe it's building a shed.

Management of your project can be as formal or informal as fits the people affected by the project and the scope of the project.  However, any project has a higher likelihood of success if the person leading the project thinks about these 5 key principles that cross all methodologies, scope definitions and interested parties.

In this article, I am going to highlight the 5 key principles to any project's success. This is a kick off to a series that will go more in depth on each of the principles.

What are the 5 key principles of Project Success?

Principle 1: A Concise Project Definition

Whether you are building a shed or launching a new product, it always helps to have a concise project definition. The reader of a good project definition understands why you are doing the project and its ultimate outcome. Think of it as a summary of your business case. For example, "My car does not fit in my garage because my bicycles and tools are taking up too much space. Therefore, I am building a shed in my backyard so that I can store my toys and park my car." I always like to be sure there is some form of "so that" in my project definitions.

Principle 2: Project Buy In that Sticks

Most successful projects start with support from those who are impacted by the project - whether they know it or not. There are often conscious stakeholders and unconscious stakeholders. Conscious stakeholders know about the project and often either support, do not support or are indifferent about the outcomes. Unconscious stakeholders do not know they should care about the process or outcomes of the project. These are the folks who might catch you by surprise down the road!

For my shed project, it is obvious that my husband, the builder and I all care about the shed project. However, do I need to think about my neighbors? Will they care about the noise or the impact on their view? What about my children? Will they support the move of their bicycles?

Principle 3: Clear Task Estimation

In a simple example like a shed project, task estimation may not seem like a big deal. However, if you live in a region that gets rain and snow it may be very important. How long will it take to order the parts; is the contractor available; how long will it take to build the foundation? The structure?

Clear task estimation is not synonymous with accurate task estimation or even thorough task estimation. Much like project definition, it is more important to clearly communicate the meaning behind tasks and estimates than to be exact in their estimation at the outset. For example, are your tasks tied clearly to outcomes? Are they understandable? Are you estimating effort or duration?

Principle 4: Flexible Project Execution

One of the greatest gifts of agile software development is the idea of a flexible mindset. Unless you have a project that has been done before, with well-known milestones and tasks, it is highly likely that your project is going to evolve over time. More important than a plan that you "stick to," is a plan that can respond to change and a project manager who has the mechanisms in place to understand how the project is progressing.

In my shed project, although we have a good sketch, I need to be ready for the plans to change once the building begins. This is very typical in home remodels, for a different example. Once you pull off the sheet rock, you never know what is behind the walls. Once you start doing the work, you can expect surprises. A good project manager is prepared to anticipate change.

Principle 5: Effective Decision-Making

Decision-making is not one of those things you find in all of the standard project management approaches. However, I have found decision-making to be the single most important aspect of a successful project. It is critical to know who is ultimately making the decisions that impact the project. I like to keep a list of "open questions/decisions" that have to be made for project success. Some companies use decision-making frameworks to guide their projects.

In the shed project, who approves the spend? Who approves the design? The location? I personally do not care about the design, for example. As long as it fits in the space we allocated, my husband can design it however he wants. However, I do feel that we have a budget and I am an "approver" of the ultimate spend.

Start Now and Learn More

Whether you write them down or think about it in your head - applying these 5 principles can help any project get started on the right foot towards success.

Would you like to go more deeply into the 5 principles of project success? Join CW Training and Consulting for Demystifying Project Management – What Really Drives Project Success. A 4 hour workshop being held on October 12th, 12:30 p.m. at Open Canopy in Redwood City, CA. Alternatively, set up a custom workshop with us and we will come to your business.

Project Excellence - 09/14/2016
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