Skip to main content

Information for Decision-Making 101

Image
By

In his 2005 book, Blink:  The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell examines the balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking and concludes that truly successful decision making is a balance between the two.   As in Gladwell’s other bestselling book, The Tipping Point, there are many insights and lessons for the nonprofit leader in Blink.

Take the decoding and sorting of information, for example.  Having a deep knowledge of a topic, combined and honed with experience, allows some people to make seemingly snap interpretations or decisions.  Nonprofit leaders are expected to decode and sort an increasing array of nuts-and-bolts organizational information as well as possess subject matter expertise…and perform these skills in the shifting landscape of social and economic change. 

The challenge for CEOs, particularly in the instance of board members who may not possess deep knowledge or experience about the organization for which they serve, is to provide just enough of both to increase the quality of decision- making.  Gladwell notes, “…in good decision making, frugality matters.”  Overloading decision makers with information makes picking out identifiable patterns harder. 

Given the fact that we often overload our boards, our staffs, and ourselves with reams of data, opinion, and extraneous “information” it’s no wonder that many boards and executive staffs get bogged down.  So, if decision-making takes a balance between the head and the gut, where’s the balance between the right amount and too much information? 

On the practical side, most organizational consultants and time management experts concur that all information needs to be triaged into one of three categories:  1) stuff that really helps good decision-making happen by framing topics and allowing identifiable patterns to be seen and analyzed, 2) stuff that’s nice to know and could be useful at a later time, and 3) just stuff.   Rule of thumb: The quantity of some stuff is almost always directly related to its lack of usefulness (think junk mail).

So, before you send out the next packet of “information” to your board before its next meeting, triage it.  Ask yourself if the material remaining in your category #1 will truly help decision-making.  What would make it better?  Graphs or checklists instead of dense narratives?  A short article or blog post to frame an issue?  Would adding a brief staff presentation or tour at some point during a meeting help to build a board member’s experience, thus adding to their decision-making skill-set?

And, despite humans’ extraordinary abilities to make snap judgments, Gladwell urges we slow it down a bit, “…even the giant computer in our unconscious needs a moment to do its work.”

Photo:  we are making decisions by alphalim 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Most Important Nonprofit Executive Director Soft Skills

By
If you were asked to narrow down the list of executive director qualifications to the three most important, which ones would you identify? Would the list consist of soft skills, hard skills, or some combination? Would your list be based on the great ED you are or one you've worked for, or would it be your wish list for the ED you haven't been fortunate yet to work for?  This was an assignment in my recent online class in leadership and administration for the American Association for State and Local History . I asked the class to review three-five advertisements for museum directors and analyze what these listings intimated about the organization’s past experience, current focus and goals, and future aspirations. Then, I asked the class to identify what they consider to be the three most important qualifications they would look for in a director. (Okay, so there's more than three if you dissect my three big groups.)  Soft skills outnumbered hard skills, although
26 comments
Read more

Back in the Saddle

By
MY LAST POST WAS NOVEMBER 2012, A LIGHT YEAR AWAY it seems, that marked the beginning of a long push toward completing a manuscript on history museum leadership with my co-author, Joan Baldwin.  We finally submitted 350+ pages to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield this week.  If all goes well, we expect the book to be available in early 2014.  It's taken us two years to get to this point, so six more months or so of revision and production don't seem too long to wait until we can hold the final product in our hands (and you can, too!). The project put a lot of things on hold, including this blog.  I'm glad to be back writing about intentional leadership -- leading by design -- for nonprofit boards and staffs.  Certainly, my thoughts are now informed by the forthcoming book, in which Joan and I posit that nonprofits need to focus resources on leadership, not just management.  Most cultural nonprofits are at a crossroad, as is the sector in general, where nothing is qu
14 comments
Read more

What Would Make You Turn Down an Invitation to Join a Board?

By
THERE'S SO MUCH WRITTEN ABOUT RECRUITING BOARD TALENT, I thought I'd spend a little time thinking about it from the prospect's point of view. Clearly, there are boards where the line is long to get on them. But what would make you turn down an invitation? Here's a short list to get the conversation started: 1. You've had no prior exposure to the organization. Your immediate reaction is "did you pull my name out of a hat?" (Is that lady in the picture the head of the Nominating Committee?) Seems as though there must be a hidden agenda at work (like you're rich and once you become a board member you'll pour all your resources into the organization) or the organization is simply looking for any warm body to fill a seat. 2. The organization doesn't have a good reputation. There's something to be said for street cred. An organization that's floundering may be strengthened by your participation or you may find yourself sucked into
15 comments
Read more