Remember when a "team gathering" was an opportunity to ride in an elevator? The days you could meet your colleague in the lobby, talk about an issue and make an informed decision prior to the doors opened to your floor?


Okay, so maybe you never had an elevator, but I'll bet you'll remember a time when decision-making seemed simple. But, more importantly, when those choices were implemented quickly, effectively and efficiently.


The situation has changed. Now, it feels like decisions take forever to make and that you're sitting in endless meetings that are constantly going around the drain. It's as if you're having the same conversation over and over again. Worse, even when you finally make a decision it is an uncertain matter as to whether it is going to be executed.


There are numerous reasons why businesses that are growing encounter this obstacle of poor and inefficient decision-making, mostly having to increase complexity. The two primary points to keep in mind arefirstly, that you're not alone, and secondly, that it is essential to get through this perilous stage quickly and recover your confidence.


These are the most important steps to help you achieve this.


1. Be aware that anecdotes aren't actual data.


In a small-sized business, anecdote is a fair indicator of data. Anecdote is a good way to get data. Are you hearing two complaints about your products? There's likely a real quality problem. Do you feel uncomfortable when sales representatives are talking to a customer over the phone? You are likely to may need to offer some remedial training. Visit this link: https://flipsimu.com/dice-roller/roll-d8/ for more information.


As your business grows, however, and the environment becomes more complex, the anecdote loses its association with information. It becomes just that anecdotal. The fact that your sales representative heard two complaints in the past month does not more necessarily implies that you have an issue with your quality. You'll need to collect actual data to figure it out.


Therefore, with each important decision that you have to make, you must take the time to gather data, or you'll make wrong decisions based upon incomplete information.


Start practicing team-based decision making.


Just as anecdote is no longer a proxy for the data we need in our increasingly complicated business, it is now similarly unlikely that any single person has all the data required to make the best decisions.


Make non-trivial choices. Gather the knowledge, authority, and influence to discuss the information. Then , you can decide to defer or reconsider the decision if you don't have all the information.


Data, debate, decide or defer is the pattern of high-quality team-based decision making.


Be accountable


In the past, taking a decision was closely linked to implementing it. It was likely that you would have made a decision before morning and it would be almost done by the time you got home. It's less likely now. Every day seems like New Year's Day full of wonderful resolutions that might or might not be realized.


This is why it is essential to pay as much attention to implementation as to making the decision. When the decision is made take note of the next steps that must be completed, the people who will perform them , and when they will be completed. Make a plan for a meeting and check that what people say they will do has actually been done, and rinse and repeat.


Running a growing company is enough of a challenge and shouldn't be made more difficult than it needs to be. It's not feasible to manage your teenagers using the same tools for parenting that you used as babies so don't try to manage your newly complex business using the same tools you used when it was small.