How to Create High-Performance Decision-Making Teams

Teams have the potential to outperform individuals.  High-performance decision-making teams do better because they have the right people working on a task. Team members have diverse skills and perspectives that create a multiplier effect.

Every success or mishap, every opportunity seized or missed is the result of a decision that someone made or failed to produce. At many organizations, decisions routinely get stuck inside the organization. At stake is the performance of the entire organization, regardless of:

• the industry
• size of the organization
• how well known your company may be
• how smart your strategy is

If you cannot make the right decisions quickly and effectively, and execute those decisions consistently, your business will lose ground.

On average, teams make better decisions 75 percent of the time, and organizations rarely do worse than managers and executives deciding alone, according to Cloverpop business decision database. Since decision-making drives business performance, that decision advantage goes straight to the bottom line.

A good decision executed quickly beats a brilliant decision implemented slowly.

The larger the team, the more effort and overhead it takes to keep people organized, involved and productive.

Is there an ideal number of members on a team?

Researchers frequently study the effectiveness of group decision-making. Think about the benefits of a large group versus the ideal number of people. The more people you have, theoretically, the better chance you have of getting the best information to make the best decision.

Hackman and Vidmar (1970) research found on optimum group size is 4.6 members—call it five that the number is just one factor. Social sensitivity and being able to read emotions are attributes of successful team decision-making. Consider the number and consider the members, as some may need a little training in empathy, sensitivity to others, and developing a culture that allows all to take part fully.

More recently, in the report, Decide and Deliver: 5 Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization, the authors state that the optimum size for a decision-making group is seven people. Also, for each additional person, the group’s decision-making effectiveness reduces by ten percent.

The broader consensus suggests we split the difference with an ideal team size of about six people. I prefer to say the range is five to seven people—based on the complexity of the work. So, a Board of directors should be seven people, whereas a project team for the implementation of a defined task should be five individuals. At that point, group performance is highest, and the complexity of running the team is still manageable. When it comes to decisions,

None of us is as smart as all of us” ― Kenneth H. Blanchard

Use the collective intelligence in the room

Many of the most important cross-functional decisions are, by their very nature, the most difficult to orchestrate.

Over my career, I have likely spent more than 15,000 hours in meetings. The significant sessions had the right people in the room. All the participants came to the meeting well prepared. We debated the matters at hand. We built on each others’ ideas – using the collective intelligence of the group for a full and meaningful discussion. Moreover, we achieved consensus decisions. Those attending the meeting left energized, supporting the resolution, and ready to sell it to stakeholders.

How many of your meetings fall into this category?

For me, it is about one in ten.

I have previously provided insights regarding how to use the collective intelligence in the room. Research has revealed that collective intelligence does exist. However, according to a study reported in Science, the October 2010 issue by authors Anita Williams Woolley, Christopher F. Chabris, Alex Pentland, Nada Hashmi and Thomas W. Malone:

This “c factor” (the group’s collective intelligence) is not strongly correlated with the average or largest individual intelligence of group members, but it correlates with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in conversational turn-taking, and the number of women in the group.

EI and soft skills

Emotional intelligence and soft skills are essential to the functioning of teams—more than focusing on the ideal number. Our assessment of potential team members' performance traits provides insights to ensure the team has a broad range of thought diversity. Knowing these metrics is essential for establishing a high-performing decision-making team.

At the top of my list of the most common reasons that meetings fail are that the wrong people are in the room and there are too many people in the room.

However, getting the right team members and the right size is only a portion of the answer. Unfocused discussions slow down decision-making even in right-sized teams. Individuals bring their own biases and agendas to the process. Team leaders struggle to get buy-in for their choices.

To boost your team’s performance, add discipline to the decision-making process with these best practices for high-performance teams:

Ensure the strategy is well-defined

Our preferred approach is to treat strategy-making as developing a set of answers to five interlinking questions that cascade logically from the first to the last.

• What are our broad aspirations for our organization and the concrete goals against which we can measure our progress?
• Across the potential field available to us, where will we choose to play and not play?
• In our chosen place to play, how will we win against the competitors there?
• What capabilities are necessary to build and maintain to win in our chosen manner?
• What are management systems necessary to build, operate and maintain critical capabilities?

The team mandate document should have answers to these questions as a starting point unless the purpose of the team is to develop a strategy. The team needs to have the ability to provide feedback based on their additional insights, where the five inter-related questions are not fully aligned.

Fill the right roles on high-performance decision-making teams

If team members do not know their roles, or if any parts are unfilled, then friction and frustration can grind team decision-making to a standstill. RAPID is a useful framework for making sure you have the right people on the team. It is a checklist to ensure that you have the bases covered.

• Recommending — Who is recommending alternatives?
• Agree — Who must agree to/with the decision?
• Perform — Who is going to perform the actions required?
• Input — Who will give information through critical facts and data?
• Decision — Who will make the final decision?

It is equally important to ensure you have cognitive diversity on the team. Having cognitive diversity leads to challenging conventional thinking for breakthrough success. When forming groups, we assist organizations in securing team members who collectively are high in the nine problem-solving styles are available for the assignment, by assessing the performance traits of team members.

Research suggests that the diversity of backgrounds and perspectives is essential to a company's success—up to 30 percent more profitable. People can play multiple roles to keep team size down, but if any positions are left unfilled, decision quality will suffer.

Create high-performance decision-making teams of challengers

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb

We do not want people on sides to feel inhibited — they need to be able to say what they think without risk. It’s exhilarating when someone comes up with an idea, and we think ‘wow! I wish I’d thought of that’. This breakthrough happens by having a diversity of thought on our teams.

Putting together a group of individuals with performance strengths in each of the nine problem-solving styles will produce superior results. However, they will have more conflict and healthy discussions. Consider the investment you are making in the team. Invest in analytics to ensure you have all the bases covered.

The result should be new and different but something that people naturally like. It’s a whole new world for us. Your team should be delighted to be part of it. They will be part of something much more significant.

I have previously written that success is not just about how creative, smart or driven we are but much more about how well we can connect, contribute to — and benefit from — the ecosystem of the people around us. Almost every attribute of our potential — from intelligence to creativity, and leadership to engagement requires connecting with other people.

Get input separately, then share perspectives

People are impressionable. When exposed to other’s opinions before forming their own, they tend to anchor on the current view. The “wisdom of the crowd” hinge on the independence of the respective judgments. That independence is easily compromised, in many ways—anchoring, of course, but also common backgrounds, training, friends, etc. You may think you’re getting 5-6 opinions when effectively you are getting only 1.5!

Decision-making teams have immense power to widen perspective — research shows that in typical business settings decision-making teams triple the number of choices considered. So before getting the team together, gather select input from the team members by asking two questions:

• What are the critical goals of the decision?
• What are the best realistic choices to meet these goals?

Get it in writing to level the playing field for people with different communication styles. Then share these perspectives with the entire team, and ask the group two questions:

• What stands out?
• What is missing?

Communicate what and why, and how they helped

Getting buy-in to implement a decision is essential. It is equally as important as making the right decision in the first place. However, the real buy-in will not happen unless we share the details of the resolution and the reasons for making it.

Amazingly, we often skip this step, because we may forget to do it in the excitement of deciding. However, sometimes we "forget" because the quality of our decision is unsatisfactory. If we go with our gut, then it may be hard to explain why. Moreover, if we start rationalizing, people will see that we are making up reasons after the fact. On the other hand, high-quality team decisions are more natural to communicate along with the reasons behind them broadly.

Communicating our team decisions also allows us to thank each team member for their specific input publicly. This communication and appreciation creates a feeling of fairness and boosts buy-in even when decisions do not go their way.

How This Works in The Real World

• Lack of Involvement — Without consulting the individuals who will take on the work, an executive director promises an old friend that his organization will do a complex project. His staff felt out of the loop, and they were slightly disgruntled.
• Clarity of responsibilities — Several organizations, are engaged to support a single initiative. However, none of the partners fully understand where their duties begin and end. When they disagree, who gets to decide?
• Decision authority — Ten busy staff members spend many hours discussing a relatively minor issue—whether the organization should hire a summer intern. However, no one is clear who has the final say. The meeting ends without a decision.
• Tough decision to make — A company had a group of partners who did not fit the new direction the company was heading. The partners would be accommodating. However, the CEO felt uncomfortable leaving them behind. Her gut reaction was to give them free access to the old product, as a thank you. It also avoided the software engineering work required to end the program. However, she knew the risks of deciding alone. So, she followed these best practices by using our product to get input and buy-in. It turned out to be a brilliant move. Getting the team’s perspectives, saved her from making a terrible decision. It was time to end the program.

Do these situations resonate with you?

If so, you are far from alone. Decision-making is difficult when there are vague reporting structures, lack of understanding of the complexities that naturally arise in an organization, and too many folks at the leadership table.

Wasted time, confusion, and frustration is the result. Individually, everyone’s intentions are good, yet the whole performs poorly. Moreover, in the worst cases, decision-making difficulties can create a climate of mistrust, and even undermine an organization’s mission.

Leading high-performance decision-making teams is tough. However, bring the right people and the proper process together, and you will win every time.