How to improve your executive decision-making skills
When you become an executive, decision-making becomes a significant part of your day-to-day responsibilities. In fact, a 2019 McKinsey survey indicates that managers spend nearly 40% of their time making decisions, so improving your executive decision-making skills can help you make quicker, more thorough decisions and avoid stress.
Enroll in an Executive Education program on edX and explore this guide to learn how to become a more effective decision-maker at work.
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Why is decision-making an important skill for executives to have?
Executives are generally responsible for overseeing their company's economic growth and accomplishing overarching goals, such as improving a product design or expanding operations into new markets. However, organizational change is often necessary to usher in this growth. Executives must have highly developed decision-making skills to determine what changes can best accomplish their goals.
Executives who have developed their decision-making skills can:
- Identify a problem and its potential causes
- Determine whether or not the problem will recur
- Ideate various solutions
- Predict the effects of each solution on stakeholders
- Weigh the pros and cons of each solution
- Compromise with stakeholders
- Pivot strategies as necessary
- Decide which solution will be most effective at solving the problem
- Implement the solution
- Observe the changes to determine whether they had the desired effects
What decision-making skills do executives need?
Leaders need various problem-solving and personal skills to become effective executive decision-makers. These necessary skills may include:
- Problem identification: Most executives make decisions to improve an aspect of their organization. However, you cannot determine how to fix something without identifying the problem at hand, making problem identification a crucial executive decision-making skill.
- Creativity: Some business decisions don't have a blueprint or case studies to base your actions on and, therefore, require innovation. Using creative thinking skills to ideate a range of solutions can heighten the scope and impact of your decision-making.
- Analytical thinking: Business decisions have long-term impacts on many stakeholders, so weighing out all your options and assessing the effects of each can make your decisions more thorough.
- Collaboration: Your colleagues, even non-executives, have unique perspectives about their position and work processes. Therefore, consulting other people about your decisions can help you determine what will work best for everyone, not just the executive team.
Tips for improving executive decision-making skills
Any leader can develop a more thorough decision-making process through intention and practice. Explore these tips and edX's library of Executive Education programs today to learn how to become a more effective decision-maker.
Tip 1: Define your decision-making style
Just as there are various leadership styles, there are also different decision-making styles. Knowing what type of decision-maker you are can help you create a framework for how you'll decide. For example, if you tend to take your time and weigh all available options before deciding, you may consider setting a deadline to avoid procrastination.
Tip 2: Understand decision-making traps
There may be certain decisions you make in which the solution seems obvious. However, the obvious solution — or even the solution most agreed upon by your peers — may not be the most effective. Try to weigh all available options rather than defaulting to the easiest.
Tip 3: Identify stakeholders
Each decision can affect different people and aspects of your organization. For example, changing the material of a product may impact the people who manufacture it and those who buy it. By determining your stakeholders and how the decision may affect them, you can make a more informed decision that minimizes negative results.
Tip 4: Avoid assumptions
Although intuition, peer input, and experience are critical to making educated business decisions, quantitative data can provide further context for a fact-driven rationale behind your decision. You can research case studies, polls, and internal data to inform your choices so you don't rely solely on feelings.
Tip 5: Trust your judgment
Don't dwell on it once you've made your decision. Instead, focus on progressing and making further improvements with time and observation.
Even if your decision didn't have the exact effects you had hoped or planned, this doesn't mean you made a poor decision. Take note of what worked and didn't, and use these insights when making your next critical decision.