Cloverpop Blog

Get the high points of our new research with this infographic, then go deeper into the surprising results and concrete recommendations with our free white paper Hacking Diversity With Inclusive Decision Making.

We studied 588 real business decisions made by 184 teams in a wide variety of companies over 2 years. Here is what we learned:

Decision making drives 95% of business performance.* It's the most important thing managers and executives do at work.

Teams make better decisions than individuals 66% of the time. Teams bring broader perspective, identify new choices, reduce bias and improve accountability.

Diverse teams make better decisions 87% of the time. Inclusion instantly activates existing gender, age and geographic diversity for better business decision making.

Diversity can increase friction 15%, but inclusion boosts results 60%. The worst combination is an all-male team deciding what a diverse group executes. This happens half the time in companies with fewer than 30% women. The best combination is inclusive decision making and diverse execution.

Learn more at www.cloverpop.com/diversity.

Corporate leaders, diversity experts and authors, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs today expressed their support for the findings uncovered by Cloverpop’s new study revealing the impact of inclusive decision making on business performance. The new research, published today, found that gender diverse business teams make 25 percent better decisions than all male teams, with this advantage increasing by up to 50 percent when a wide range of ages and geographic diversity are added to team compositions.

Cloverpop today published research that reveals how inclusive decision making allows companies, especially tech companies, to use diversity to improve business performance. The study -- lauded by experts and executives -- was based on 566 business decisions made by 184 different business teams in a wide variety of companies over two years. The research found that gender diverse business teams make 25 percent better decisions than all male teams, with this advantage increasing by up to 50 percent when a wide range of ages and geographic diversity are added to team compositions. A free white paper describing the study and resulting recommendations can be downloaded today. A free webinar will be held on Tuesday, September 26, at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET.

Industry trailblazer Regis McKenna once declared, “Marketing is everything, and everything is marketing.” Today that’s more true than ever. Marketing is the connective tissue and motivating force of a business, spanning from the 4 Ps to the 5 Cs, from creative content to cutting-edge technology, from advertising tactics to business strategy.

Product managers are on the hook to make decisions and build consensus. Nothing is harder. In most organizations, no one reports to product management. The job requires execution by influence. There are many stakeholders: design, development, marketing, and sales, to name a few. And they all have differing needs and priorities.

Effective decision making is critical to success, but most companies treat it as a vague alchemy of charismatic leadership and gut judg

ment mixed with data and analysis, with no systems in place to transparently manage the decision-making process itself.

Steve Jobs was an iconic product genius. Many product managers want to be like Steve, but they’re not. And that’s not all bad. Aspiring to Steve's amazing product vision is laudable. But luckily most product people are not abusive jerks. This is because unlike Steve Jobs, you are a product manager, not a product tyrant. And as a manager, you understand that people skills matter, that your job is also about helping your product team be insanely great. You can aim higher than Steve.

Business managers and executives underperform by 20% because of poor decision making.

Over the past decade, I have been a leading advocate for a transformation in work. One of the most critical changes I have argued for is the rejection of business practices founded on folklore, and the adoption of new ways of work grounded on science, and in particular, cognitive science. Ignoring what we have learned in recent years about human reasoning and continuing to rely on outdated and non-scientific myths would not only be wrong, but dangerous.

Do you see any of these decision-making problems at your work?

- Decisions take too long.
- Decisions don't involve the right people.
- Decisions are not data-driven.
- Decisions are not communicated consistently.
- Decision execution fails from poor follow-through.

If so, you not alone. Decision-making mistakes and inefficiencies happen again and again in business, damaging 20% of manager performance, and acting like a boat anchor on about 50% of employee engagement.

Some decision-making advice works, and some is just happy talk. Decisive business people should know when it's bad, and good, to sleep on it and go with your gut.

Decision making. It’s the bread and butter of managers and executives, who make about three billion decisions each year. Indeed, Bain & Company research found that decision effectiveness is 95 percent correlated with financial performance, while the UK Institute for Employment Studies found that decision making underlies 50 percent of employee engagement.

Despite this, very few of us keep track of the decisions we make and how they turn out. Think of it: you track sales, you track web clicks, you track your Starbucks receipts. But you don’t track the very most important thing you do at work - the decisions you make.

As a result, most organizations are not very good at decision making. It's no surprise that our study of 500 managers and executives found 98% fail to apply best practices when making decisions.

If decision making is so important, why are we so in the dark?