Step Three

Aim: The provision of ongoing support to ensure the embedding of the decision model throughout the organisation and the effective maximisation of benefits within departments, including performance management, interviewing, investigations, identifying training needs and risk management. 

By aligning the goal-orientated outcomes of your organisation’s decision-making model to the organisation’s strategic intentions, we can create the golden thread that links daily managerial decision making with the strategic direction of your organisation.

Example goal-oriented outcomes for your organisation’s decision-making model:

• Safety and welfare of staff, clients, public, and equipment at all times
• Cost-effective and efficient use of all available resources
• Strong and effective leadership
• Compliance with legal and contractual duties

The agreed-upon goals will form the focus for your organisation’s decision-making model outcomes. We can cross-reference departmental activity and managerial decision-making requirements for each outcome and identify touchpoints for training delivery.

Example goal: safety and welfare of staff, clients, public, and equipment at all times.

Ensuring and maintaining the safety and welfare of your staff, clients, the public, and equipment is a primary role and responsibility of the Health & Safety  (H&S) department. Key to continuous improvement in organisational H&S is implementing learning from previous incidents gained through H&S event investigation. Interviewing personnel involved in H&S events is critical to understanding why the event occurred. A systematic process based on your decision model will allow examination of each aspect of a person’s decision making; from the information they gathered, their understanding of the situation and risks to their expected outcomes. The investigation process can then focus more objectively on identifying training needs or process changes than directing blame.

Example goal: cost-effective and efficient use of all available resources.

Goals aimed at cost-effective and efficient use of all available resources need to be focused on areas of significant resource dependency and utilisation. Whether in the use of vehicle fleet or Human Resources from the recruitment and retention to ongoing support and development of staff.

Efficient utilisation of all available assets is fundamental to effective decision making. Therefore, consideration of the capacity and capabilities of available resources within the information-gathering stage of decision making is essential for ensuring that the most efficient use is being made of those resources.

Your organisational decision-making model will incorporate the best practice principles of monitoring and evaluating actual progress against planned; to ensure that the effective use of all available resources has constantly been reviewed.

Human Resources (HR) is the first point of contact with staff in the recruitment process and therefore provides the best opportunity to understand how people will think and act in the role. Interviews focussing on how a person makes a decision, their considerations, risk analysis and expectations, rather than focusing predominately on their answers, enables interviewers to understand better how the person will think and act in many other situations. By understanding the principles by which an individual makes a decision, we can better understand how those principles will apply to their working environment.

As with H&S event investigations, investigations by managers and HR into staff behaviours and actions can be standardised and more objectively focused through a sequential decision-making model. By understanding their thinking and acting at each sequential stage, managers may better understand and identify unacceptable behaviour; or an identified training need.

Example goal: strong and effective leadership

Strong and effective leadership demonstrated at a strategic level must be communicated and embedded throughout the organisation. As decision making is a prerequisite for every managerial function, the link between strategic direction and daily management of functions through decision-making processes needs to be aligned and embedded.

Strong leadership provides for a clear direction of travel. Managers need to be clear about why they are doing something, and the staff need to know why these actions need to occur.

Identifying and communicating the link between tactical goals and the organisation’s strategic direction enables managers and staff to understand the organisational direction of travel better.

Managers and staff must understand the crucial link between their daily decision making and the impact these decisions have on how successful the organisation is at meeting its strategic objectives.

Example goal: compliance with legal and contractual duties

Compliance with legal and contractual duties ensures your organisation mitigates reputational, financial and legislative risks arising daily during its business operations. Failure to meet contractual duties may incur financial penalties and reputational damage. Managers must factor in financial loss, legal requirements and reputational damage to their organisation when directing and prioritising task resourcing. Decision-makers may often be faced with competing priorities. Using an organisation focussed decision model would better frame their understanding of risks versus benefit decisions that balance financial, legal and reputational challenges when tasking limited resources.