Innovative companies win or lose based on the speed and effectiveness of their decision practices. The First Round Review article "How This Head of Engineering Boosted Transparency at Instagram" unpacks the compelling story of a leader who took practical steps to transform his team's culture through transparency in decision-making.
The recent Medium article “How we make decisions at Coinbase” by CEO Brian Armstrong gets a lot right, especially this: Decision-making should be about problem-solving, not politics.
The lightning pace of change driven by digital transformation means decision making is more important than ever before.
This rapid churn puts more pressure on leaders’ decision practices in many ways:
We used to expect businesses to last a lifetime, but digital transformation is a mass-extinction event for old corporations and a mass-creation event for new ones. It has changed everything. For instance, consider data from S&P, which predicts half the S&P 500 will disappear in the next decade.
What are you doing to unlock the power of inclusion in your organization? Our recent research reveals the pernicious inclusion gap between workforce diversity and inclusive decision-making in enterprises. Learn how best practices can improve outcomes and speed up innovation by measuring and closing this gap.
Is it better to have “up-and-comers” or “more seasoned” employees making decisions at your company?
It turns out the best answer is a mix of generations, and it’s a wake-up call to companies everywhere, from a tech industry enamored of young workers to global enterprises managing large aging workforces:
Tech-savvy executives have a pivotal role to play in accelerating the decision cycle. By asking the right questions, they can digitally transform decision making at their companies, leading to a future where decisions are tracked, transparent, de-biased, optimized and integrated.
Executives sixty years ago could expect their companies to last a lifetime. Executives today will see half of the S&P 500 disappear in the next decade. The business world is in a digital churn of creative destruction. As McKinsey calls it, we are in the Age of Urgency.
The decision cycle sets the speed limit for your business. Companies with decisive cultures will thrive. The rest will fade away.
The title of the recent Diginomica article says it all: "Cloverpop Shows Sales Teams How To Make Better Decisions." Industry expert Phil Wainewright's interview with Cloverpop CEO Erik Larson covers a range of topics, from the antique approach that most companies take to decision making:
Every engineering leader knows about the Mythical Man-Month -- the wishful idea that a software project can be delivered faster simply by adding more people. We’ve all tried and failed at this. Recently, Cloverpop faced this problem as our engineering team grew faster and faster with each round of funding.
The higher the headcount, the more time each person spends trying to coordinate with everyone else. More questions, more training, more politics, more documentation, more meetings. Especially more meetings. So nobody was more shocked than I was when our per person productivity actually increased after a recent round of hirings. It felt like the software equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It was magic.
