Decision making is such a critical part of our lives. More so, for one who occupies an executive role. The movie “Eye in the sky” brings to the fore the importance of decision taking, but more importantly, the importance of timing in decision making.
The movie conveys how very quickly the environment can change during execution, the pressure that comes with such changes, especially when such calls for strategy change. An execution team must be structured to adapt quickly and take decisions.
While the initial plan for the team was “a capture mission”, it was clear that the team had a plan B option, which was “to kill”. Upon access to more information, the team got more clarity, which triggered the need to activate plan B. Hence changing the strategy quickly, from a capture to a kill mission.
Decision making is often characterised by dilemma, with each choice option ladened with pros and cons. It is therefore important to have a clearly defined goal. When the goal is concise and clear to all team members and key stakeholders, decision making becomes less difficult.
Another major barrier in decision making is bias. Team members will typically have their biases, however, with clarity on goal and the success criteria, the team is able to manage biases. Irrespective of the changing environment, the goal, if clearly defined would typically remain constant. The strategy of how the goal is executed is prone to change due to the dynamic nature of business problems and projects and the team should be set up to be adaptable to the changes.
It is equally key, that team members at the coal face are empowered to take decisions. While escalations might be desirable, it often does not help the execution team, when under pressure, if they are unable to take quick decisions. Often, decisions are best taken by individuals directly involved in the situation as they have the privilege of experience first-hand, the situation of ground and therefore are better able to assess the situation. Hence, an execution team requires persons, adequately experienced and high ranking enough to take strategic decisions.
The movie, “Eye in the sky” is very relatable to me, as I do see my team struggle every now and then, in making decisions at various stages of the project. The fear of consequence, being one on the major hinderances to taking quick decisions. I have also experienced first-hand, how data availability heuristics have been deployed to force a team into taking decisions just like cornel Powell had to do in the movie. Suffice to say data availability is key to decision making.
Key learning for me is the importance of not only taking the right decisions, but the value of time in decision taking. Also 80% is good enough rule. It is almost impractical to have all boxes checked at 100% in real life situations. Leaders must learn t make a call and once the benefits out ways the downsides, then that may just be a good enough point to make a call.
